Via Vincio: The Braided Way
by Gabi-hime
Summary: Little seeds of mercy sown by youthful hands. Yuki Cross tours the world with one man, and another. Kaname x Zero x Yuki. Because things that are good are not always easy or simple. Post VK: Guilty.
1. Like drops of water in the ocean

Spoilers for Vampire Knight and Vampire Knight Guilty TV.

**Via Vincio: The Braided Way**

By Gabihime ( gabihime at gmail dot com )

_One - Like drops of water in the ocean._

-

Once upon a time there was a goose-girl, although she was not born a goose-girl but a princess, the only daughter of a beautiful queen whose husband had died. The queen decided that for the princess to find happiness, she needed to wed, so she arranged for her daughter to marry a king from a far kingdom, whom she knew was kind and noble and just. Then, although it pained her to be parted from her daughter, the queen sent the princess away on a journey to the far kingdom.

It was on this journey that the princess was turned into a goose-girl.

-

The first moments when her feet had led her away from the old stone home of Cross Academy were heady and breathless. She was dizzy, lighter than air, like her soul was helium in a balloon that was tethered to Kaname Kuran's arm as he slowly, patiently led her forward. Perhaps her soul was made of helium now, or some other strange and unfamiliar substance; helium, queen of the noble gases and Yuki Cross, sole and singular princess of the Kuran family.

In some ways it was not immediately real, their departure, her exodus from the walled garden that had been her home for the ten years of her happy idyll, cloistered from both the troubles of vampire society, and the troubles of the world of men. Later she would reflect that it was not so very different than being released from vows in a convent. She was leaving the walled garden where she beat as the heart-rose and entering the wider, wilder world, which was unknown and mysterious. It was painful, as if she were a flower, a perennial perhaps, since she would continue to bloom year after year, a flower that was required to uproot itself, tear itself from the safe earth, because the ground where it grew no longer had a place for it. And it was also exhausting, digging doggedly with her egg tooth in an attempt to emerge wholly from the shell that was the garden by her own will, lest she leave too many of her innards behind and find herself dying, lacking some essential part of herself.

_Zero._

It was not until they were on the boat that the reality began to settle into her bones.

She was going away.

She was going away from Cross Academy. She was going away from the Headmaster, _father_, from Yori, _friend_, from Zero --

From Zero.

_Family_.

Then, standing on the deck of the steamer in the cool night air, she turned her face toward Kaname and asked,

"Where are we going?"

He had smiled briefly, the soft, gentle smile he had given to her since she was a child, and answered, "Away. It would be difficult to stay, given what has happened, even if that would give you pleasure. I am not certain it would be safe."

Her slender fingers had curled around his arm as she stood with him on the deck, her hair carried up to dance around her face by the movement of the air over the sea.

"To protect everyone at Cross Academy," she smiled and it was the mingling of happiness and loss, the face of one who has found a treasure, but paid a great price to know its value, "One guardian has to leave, I guess. I know everyone will be all right. Everyone around me was strong, and I didn't know it, or I didn't understand it. I am lucky to have been protected by the hearts of so many good people."

He pulled his arm away from her fingers and wrapped it around her back, pulling her close so that her hipbone was against him and he could feel the physical presence of her body, of her weight, and they stood, side by side, looking at the sea.

At last he answered her, "You are also strong, Yuki. Your heart may feel weak, but you are strong. You have an open heart. You have always had an open heart. I know you grieve now, because you feel like your heart is being torn away from those you are leaving, but it is not being torn away. Bonds of the heart are not like lines of string. Those that are worth do not snap with distance or time."

"I miss Cross Academy," she said softly, "It's so strange, not waking up in the dorm with Yori and having to run to get some toast at breakfast, being late for class and trying to crawl in so the teacher doesn't see me, the Headmaster out in his garden wearing his apron with kittens on it, the class president giving me a hard time over my scores. I keep thinking 'where did that time go, that I took for granted?'"

"Time goes and does not come back," Kaname murmured into the top of her head, "That is what time does, and why it is precious. But just because it has passed does not mean that you took it for granted. Whenever I saw you, you were smiling. I think you love the moments of the day, each moment, because you live smiling. We cannot live still in a bubble of time. A vampire cannot do that. Not even a pureblood can do that. The world is always moving around us, even if we ourselves stand still. The world will always change and things will pass away, but new things will come. Just because they are not the _same _things does not meant that they are not good things."

"I can't go back," Yuki trembled, closing her eyes against the thin, cool spray of the night sea, "I know I can't go back. But I miss the Headmaster, and Yori always taking care of me, and -- " she had his name in her mouth, but Kaname spoke before she could.

"I know," his voice was low, but then the moment of tension had passed and he relaxed again, "I know you do, Yuki. You are right, you can never go back to the Cross Academy that was, because that is gone. But that doesn't mean that you can't go forward to the Cross Academy that will be, some time in the future. We will not always live in difficult times. Trust me, Yuki. I will never lead you to a place you cannot return from, should you wish to."

"I know, Kaname-sem -- "

"Kaname," he corrected, and then was very still, waiting for her response.

It was one moment lost in the dark night at sea.

"Kaname," she said.

-

The answer to the question, "Where are we going?" was ultimately not "Away," as Yuki realized. They were not fleeing _from _something, but rather moving _toward _something, moving _through _something, a something that turned out to be the world around them, painted on the illustrated pages of picture books read in a windowless room a decade past. Kaname did not have to tell her, 'Let us look at the world together, that we once looked at only in books,' because when she was close to him she could feel his heartbeat and she understood, even if he wished to hide his intentions, and emotions, behind a curtain.

She had spent her life hidden from the world, for her safety, longing to touch sunsets and waterfalls and rainbows and the sea, kept first in a basement nursery and then in a walled garden. She had seen and thought and felt many things within the confines of Cross Academy -- her blood beating wild and hot, a furious joy at being alive, the terrible despair of futility -- but there was more of the world to be known than just the grounds of Cross Academy.

"Because it is different," Kaname had said, "Does not mean that you will love it less."

They landed in Shanghai with the horizon devouring the sun and painting the sky the color of the flesh of a blood orange.

"Someday," Kaname said, as he gave her his arm to disembark from the ship, "We will sail as far as you like, west, into the sunset. And you can touch the warm, amber sky, and taste the warm amber sea. You won't have to be afraid of the heat. I won't allow it to burn you."

She had laughed a little, "Can you really keep the sunset from being too hot?"

"For you," he said, "I can shift the heavens."

For him, it was a truth.

To Ruka, Seiren, Aido, and Kain she was Yuki-Kuran-sama, the Kuran princess, and nothing she could do or say could convince them otherwise. Her blood informed them, her presence informed them. She was not Yuki-Cross, and could never be. She was a pureblood vampire, and this was something that none of them could either ignore or deny, not Yuki herself, when she looked at them and saw Idol, Wild, Ruka, and Seiren, classmates, sempai, the young nobles of Kaname's court, nor they, when they turned and saw her in profile, the beautiful, courageous, kind-hearted Kuran princess. _Who she was_ could not be changed, had never been changed no matter what her name was or had been, no matter what her outward shape, and they began to love her without meaning to, even in cases where it might have been easier had they not.

A gentle vampire.

It seemed to be a thing that should not exist, even to Aido, who had once seen Haruka and Juri Kuran.

Even more strange that it could be the impossible Yuki Cross, who had been so thoroughly, intensely, and mundanely human that she had been both boring and aggravating in turns, because Kaname Kuran had paid her such attention and courtesy. What was more damning to the reckoning of such a strange turn of events was that she had not changed in any observable way. She was still thoroughly, intensely, mundanely the prefect Yuki Cross, but she was also somehow the ethereal pureblood Kuran princess, who had recklessly endangered her own life in an attempt to protect those she loved. She was two things that were different and also entirely same. She was not two. She was one.

It was not something that made sense to Aido, even when he tried, at great length, to reason it out.

He was forced to take it as it was: an article of faith.

Ruka had begun by considering Yuki-Cross-Yuki-Kuran-sama as a person who was necessary for Kaname Kuran's happiness. She was the candle that lit up his darkness, a flame to protect with bare hands. That Ruka loved Kaname could not change, had no way of changing, because it was part of her skin and blood identity. She loved him and expected nothing, because to love him made her happy. It was like loving a saint, or the Queen of Heaven, or the King of Men, and it was enough for her to show her love to him through obedience and sacrifice.

But to love and care for Yuki-Cross-Kuran did not turn out to be a sacrifice. It would never be that easy for Ruka: the simple, poetic exit of martyrdom through love. Yuki was kind and thoughtful, full of good humor, occasionally a mess, and sometimes heart-breakingly imperial. Ruka did not have to wonder why Kaname Kuran loved her, would part the seas for her, would stop the turning of the earth for her. What Ruka came to understand was that Yuki-Cross-Kuran was a person to be loved, no matter the intention with which she was approached.

This was because Yuki-Cross-Kuran _loved_.

Against this, Ruka discovered she had no defenses.

Kain found he was ultimately not very troubled. Aido was happy, although given to tantrums, which was not so different than it had ever been. Ruka was beautiful, patient, and giving, which was not so different than it had ever been. Kaname was a prince who had revealed himself a king. Yuki Kuran, the Kuran princess, loved him. These were all truths that seemed plain to him, and everything appeared to follow through in a way that made sense. Fish lived in the sea rather than swimming through the sky, and that was enough for him. He did not trouble himself that their bird princess had once been a minnow.

Seiren would follow her lord.

Yuki Kuran carried Kaname Kuran's blood and would eventually carry his child.

Seiren would guard her lord's blood with her life.

Kaname Kuran called her not Yuki Cross nor Yuki Cross Kuran nor Yuki Kuran but simply Yuki, and she was to him as she had ever been, the only thing of value in the world.

_"Kaname-onii-san. You're not alone. You're never alone. Yuki is with you."_

_"Will you leave me alone?"_

_"I won't."_

_"There must be something wrong with me. I've been in love with my brother all this time."_

_"Like beasts?"_

_"Like mother and father."_

_"I love you, Yuki. Nothing you could do will ever change that."_

_"Why did you come, now that you're free?"_

_"Because Kaname-sempai is also someone I want to protect."_

-

She slept in windowless berths and cabins, comfortable, but firmly bordered, the walls enclosing her daytime universe spent in the company of Kaname Kuran. At first she had been shy, but then that had been absurd. Kaname needed her close to him. She belonged close to him, had always strained to be close to him. There was no reason she should not stay close to him. He was her brother and she was sixteen, but they were not human and that did not matter.

She had said, _"I would bear anything for you, Kaname-sama."_

Vampire, pureblood, human, or otherwise, it would not have mattered. She had said so. She had meant it.

-

So in their windowless berths and sleeping cabins, when dawn drew on she put on her nightgown, brushed her teeth, and obediently crawled into bed. Kaname would retire from public company and she would watch him go through his nightly routine from under the blankets. When he was ready, he would turn back the sheet to discover her.

"Surprise!" she always said, as if she were still a little girl, and they had been playing hide and seek through the rooms of Kuran House.

"I'm surprised," he always assured, quite seriously, then laid down next to her.

It was easy to be with him because she found that she did not have to try to understand him. He feared she would leave him. He feared still that he would do something to push her away from him. He loved her more than his own life. He guarded her more closely than his own life. He would choose his own death before making her unhappy. He was kind. He was terrible like a monster, and strong and fierce and at times not even remotely human, but he was kind, and he loved her.

And she had loved him from conception, the moment she had sprung into being.

Sometimes she told him when they lay next to each other, feeling the sway of the sea or the rails.

"Kaname, I love you."

This she offered seriously, with wide, quiet eyes.

He would smile slightly at her serious face and say, "That makes me very happy."

-

Sometimes she would wake sweaty and screaming, the victim of some vicious, viscous dream of the past and he would wrap her in his arms and pull her against his cool, bare chest, murmuring into the damp length of her hair that she was safe, that she didn't have anything to fear. She cried against him then, cried remembering her mother and her father, remembering the blood and stain of Rido, smelling her own fear of being devoured. She cried for Zero, whom she had hurt and loved and feared and loved and left standing on a battlement, alone, because he could not love her any longer, even if he did. She cried against Kaname as if she could bury herself inside him, and he held her, stroked her hair, rubbed her back slowly and evenly, and spoke soft nonsense to her until she had cried herself out and was still.

The hunger came sometimes during the day, and sometimes at night, in rooms lit by lamps, or by the stars, in the company of others, and sometimes overwhelmingly when they were alone. He would turn to see her eyes radiating faint rose light like stars, and then he would excuse the both of them and lead her away to privacy.

"Hn," said Aido, after one nearly indiscreet departure from the glass roofed dining car, "I suppose the coupling of purebloods isn't something we're meant to see."

"_Show respect_," Ruka had snapped at him tensely, and it looked as if she might put her delicate fork through her dessert plate.

"I am _full _of respect!" Aido argued peevishly.

"You're full of something," Kain interceded laconically, sliding his own dessert plate in front of Ruka, so that she had gateau to destroy in place of the china.

"_Respect_," Aido insisted. "I am full of _respect_."

No one felt it worthwhile to argue the point with him further, so they let it rest at that and he ordered two bowls of ice cream to console himself.

-

In the dark of the cabin her eyes shone, and Kaname carried her to the bed and undid his collar, leaning close to her to smell the powdery sweetness of her hair, to smell the keenness of her hunger.

"Yuki," he spoke softly, feeling her small hands climbing his chest, "Drink as much as you need."

"Is it a wicked thing? Is it shameful? Is that why we do it out of sight?" Her voice trembled with despair and hunger, and he caught her face in his hand and turned her to look at him, and they were both bathed in the dim glow of their feral, crimson eyes.

"It is not a wicked thing and I could never be shamed by you," Kaname answered savagely, "It is a private thing. It is not a thing I would share."

"But the others feed -- "

"_They are not us_," he squeezed her shoulder tightly for a moment, then his hand relaxed and he repeated, "They are not us. Yuki, drink."

Kaname leaned back as he felt her hot, moist breath on his neck, felt the nervous touch of her tongue, then sighed faintly as he felt her bury her teeth in his neck. He could feel it, the the rhythm of his heartbeat pumping the hot coppery blood out of the two needle pricks on his carotid artery and into her mouth, could feel her lips and tongue on his neck as she struggled hungrily to swallow it all.

She always exhausted herself, the high tension of her consumption dissolving into a limp, trembling body that he held in his arms. When he held her like this, when she was spent, and he felt her warm breath on his chest, when she raised a weak hand to touch his face and asked him to drink, his own hands trembled as he brushed the hair back from her fine, slender neck and his teeth found their mark and he drank deeply, feeling her heart beat against him, feeling their hearts beating together, the blood in his mouth, staining his neck, burning in his veins.

"_Yuki_," he whispered huskily, dazed and lost in the moment when they were one beating heart and mixing blood.

"Kaname," she murmured, one hand on the pulse at his throat, "_I love you._"

"I know," he whispered back, his voice thready against the damp warmth of her neck, "Yuki."

-

And so the days tumbled by as they rode the rails between cities, sleeping -- or not sleeping -- in their cabins by day, and seeing the length and breadth of China by night. Yuki saw Taoist temples, Catholic churches, and Buddhist shrines, ate real dim sum and grass jelly, and saw a snow leopard and a wild Chinese tiger. Sometimes they went to zoos during the daytime, shaded by parasols, because she liked zoos, and while he made a fuss about not going to do something so silly, she discovered that Aido liked looking at the animals too, even when he was made to carry an over-large stuffed panda that she had admired. Kaname apparently liked _anything _she liked, liked anything that she thought of and considered that she _might possibly_ like. If she thought of it, mentioned it, wondered about it, or considered it, then they did it. Through large and small cities they sojourned, until at last they came to Jinshanling to see the Great Wall storm up mountainsides and spill down the opposite slopes.

It was sunset, and she wore a coat with ruffles because it was deep winter. She kept her hands in a muff to keep them warm and walked with Kaname along the wall, looking at the stones and bricks that been laid to keep out invaders, laid by thousands of hands over hundreds of years.

"I think it's pretty amazing that human beings built this," she observed, "Even though it took so long, they kept building it and kept building it."

Kaname smiled briefly and was about to respond when he turned sharply. Seiren had appeared close behind him, kneeling and genuflective. Seiren did not disturb them unless it was _necessary_.

"My lord," she said, her head bowed. "I have not restrained him based on your last orders concerning such. He is advancing in this direction. What shall I do?"

Kaname turned away, his cloak billowing out around him and Yuki could not help but be troubled.

"Who is coming, Seiren?" she asked, but Seiren paid her no attention. Normally she was courteous to the Kuran princess, but at this moment she was intent on hearing the answer from her lord. If she was ordered to rip this man to shreds then she needed to be gone as soon as his death sentence was levied so that the lord and the princess would be spared the scene while on their holiday.

Kaname said nothing for a long moment, then at last made his pronouncement, "If he has no hostile intentions, then let him come."

"I don't have any hostile intentions," came the answer, curt and low and to the point, "_Yet_."

Yuki turned quickly, so that her boots lost their purchase and she would have fallen had Kaname not seized her around the waist to help her keep her balance. When she looked up she remembered neither to breathe nor to hold onto her muff, which fell to the ground and rolled until it came to rest at his feet.

Zero Kiryu.

Bloody Rose.

The Vampire Knight.

_Zero._

-


	2. We walk a dusty path

Spoilers for Vampire Knight and Vampire Knight Guilty TV.

**Via Vincio: The Braided Way **

By Gabihime ( gabihime at gmail dot com )

_2 - We walk a dusty path. _

-

Once upon a time there was a goose-girl who was born a princess, but left her mother to go on a journey to a far kingdom where she was to become the wife of a king. Her mother gave her many precious things to take on her journey, but the most precious was a little cloth with the mark of three drops of her mother's own blood.

"This will protect you," she said, "When I cannot."

So the princess set out with her treasures and a chambermaid as a companion.

After they had traveled for a while, the princess was beset by a great and terrible thirst, so she asked of her maid, "Pray get down and fetch me a drink?"

But the maid said, "I shan't. I'm not your servant, and I don't believe that you're a princess at all. If you want a drink, get it yourself."

So because the thirst was terrible, the princess was compelled to dismount her horse and find a drink herself.

-

Zero stood looking at them for what seemed to be the sum total of all the ages of man, then he bent down and picked up the muff at his feet.

He wasn't wearing a coat, a cloak, or even a jacket, as if he had the bare will to disregard the chill in the air, to entirely ignore it because it wasn't immediately pertinent to the situation. He was bareheaded and his breath steamed faintly in front of him. Bloody Rose was holstered under his shoulder, in a plain and visible harness. Yuki could not help but wonder if the Chinese authorities had not challenged him over his handgun. She didn't know what rules applied to vampire hunters, particularly those that crossed international boundaries. But then she had no passport and Kaname seemed confident in his ability to whisk her around the mainland with no consequences, so maybe everything was different, depending.

She didn't know what they would have put on a passport anyway. She could not produce a vampiric birth certificate with her biological parents listed, and although the headmaster had legally adopted her, she did not know if her birthdate ten years previous would really suffice for the authorities, whoever they might be. She did not look like a ten year old girl, and she did not always remember to answer when she was called Kuran princess, and would have likely just haplessly ignored anyone attempting to call her Kuran-san, assuming that they aimed to talk to Kaname. She felt like Yuki Cross, despite the heavy guilt that told her that she was dishonoring and disrespecting the parents who had died to protect her.

She supposed if there had been a passport, it would have been filled with entirely fabricated information. Maybe it was the same for Zero.

Yuki hung, still supported by Kaname's arms, although as he resolved that she was no longer in danger of splitting her head open on the stones and brick, he eased them into a more practical position, keeping one arm reflexively curled around her waist.

"Kiryu-kun," Kaname spoke evenly, "What a pleasant surprise."

Zero's expression did not change. He looked down at the muff in his hands and then turned it over once before turning his attention to them again.

"Maybe," Zero answered noncommittally.

Yuki could feel the tension singing in the air, and from the corner of her eye she could still see Seiren crouched, waiting for a word from Kaname, and she also felt with a sickening surety that Zero would not hesitate to draw and shoot her, if she moved.

"Zero," she said, trying to keep her voice cheerful and steady, a desperate attempt to avert bloodshed with honesty, "I'm very happy to see you."

He turned the muff over again before responding.

"Is that so?" he asked, and seemed utterly disinterested.

"Of course!" she answered peevishly, her momentary irritation with Zero being Zero toppling her discomfort. "I've never been away from home for this long before!"

_I've never been away from Zero this long before,_ she thought, but did not say.

"I see," he said flatly.

She felt like throwing something at him, but worried her violence might be misconstrued by Seiren, who was probably still waiting for any indication that it was fair game to jump on Zero. Besides, she didn't have anything to throw, except for the stones that made up the long wall.

"I worry about you," she explained, rolling her eyes. "I bet you've been sleeping through all your classes, and scaring all the girls." At this she stopped and her brows kit, and she turned her head to the side before asking, "Aren't you supposed to be in school?"

"Aren't you?" he asked shortly, turning the question over on her.

"Um," she said, because this was not something she had really considered.

"Yuki is taking her lessons with us, currently," Kaname answered.

Fortunately, she did not wonder aloud, _I am?_ and so perhaps much embarrassment was averted. Zero however, did not really seem convinced.

"And who's teaching her?" Zero asked tersely, and Yuki sensed him tremble without really seeing it.

"_I am_," Kaname answered deliberately, and Yuki could feel his arm around her waist tense briefly, and then relax.

It happened in the span of half a moment, a fraction of a drawn breath as she anticipated Zero moving to pull Bloody Rose and stumbled forward, out of Kaname's arms and into the lonely, chill ground between them, knowing that she was a stupid girl and would only make everyone unhappy, knowing that she might take both the bullet of Bloody Rose and Seiren's blade, not out of malice or because of intention, but because she was always idiotically getting in the way.

But she knew, just as she had known when she had been given the choice by Shizuka Hio.

_If the choice is for Kaname to be hurt, or for Zero to be hurt, I would rather it be me who breaks._

"_Seiren_," she heard Kaname hiss sharply, heard only because she had shut her eyes tightly when she had spread her arms between them, as if she were still a small girl and could resolve a playground dispute just by wailing until the fighting stopped.

She was still for a moment, listening to her heartbeat, then she opened her eyes slowly and found Seiren still crouched, having moved, but having been called down, and the barrel of Bloody Rose a delicate chill near the lobe of her ear. She heard the hammer ease back, and then felt him brush her hair as he reholstered his gun.

"Yuki," she heard Zero mutter, "You're -- "

Having momentarily defused the situation she laughed weakly and leaned down to pick up her muff, which he had dropped to pull his weapon. She turned to look at Kaname who was silently watching her, then turned to look at Zero who was characteristically frowning.

"I know, I know. I know all the things that I am: selfish and stupid and mean. I'm sorry, but I'll keep being troublesome and getting in the way. I don't want anyone to be hurt. Not Zero, or Kaname, or Seiren-san, or anyone." And then she smiled, "And I know I'm a terrible person, because right now I'm happy. I'm happy that we're here together right now. Kaname and Zero," she shook her head, "I'm sorry. I'm just happy."

"Don't apologize," Zero said, and it was hard and abrupt, like a commandment from heaven. He turned his back on them. "You shouldn't have to apologize for being happy."

"I feel like I should," she began uncertainly.

"Because you're stupid," he said, and put his hands in his pockets.

"I'm stupid," she admitted, "But let's not fight."

"If that is what you desire, Yuki," came Kaname's calm reply. She could feel that she had hurt him and that he sought to conceal it. She moved to go to him.

Zero turned his head to watch her move, then turned his face away again.

"So be it," was all he said, and then walked away, back in the direction that he had come.

-

In the early morning, after they had boarded the train at Beijing, Yuki excused herself from company and went to sit in the dark of their cabin alone. Aido and Ruka had been high strung for most of the night after finding that Zero Kiryu had paid Kaname an unwanted visit while they had occupied themselves in the village, looking at curios. This had done nothing to assuage the sick and building guilt that pulled at Yuki from all sides. She had done something wrong. Kaname had been hurt. Zero was unhappy. Everyone was distressed. She was selfish. She did not want to see anyone, so she had quietly curled up in the bed with her giant panda and squeezed it hard until she exhausted herself, and then lay very still.

She had intended to remain alone with her worry and her guilt, but Kaname had been watching her closely all night, and seeing her excuse herself, he waited only long enough to pay cursory respect to her desire for privacy and then retired himself.

After he left the company, they all sat around in the club car staring moodily at one another until Aido tired of this and felt he had to make some sort of fuss to feel better about the situation. He did not want to think he had been remiss in allowing Kaname and Yuki out of his sight, thus perpetuating this standoff with an unwanted party. The truth of the matter was that it was mainly because he was likely to follow them anywhere, even into inappropriate situations, that Ruka and Kain generally endeavored to keep a respectful distance, and to keep him on a leash. They all knew that Seiren shadowed Kaname at all moments, and they never lingered at any measurable distance.

But Zero Kiryu had been upon the two of them, pulled a gun on Kaname, and then sent himself away all in the span of about four minutes.

It left them all feeling stung by inadequacy.

"I can't believe that Kiryu still has the gall to point a gun at Kaname-sama," stormed Aido, and then felt stupid and small for having stated something so dreadfully obvious. He poked irately at his juice cocktail.

Kain shrugged. "I can," he answered simply.

"He deserves to be torn into pieces," continued Aido shrewishly, because as Zero was not present he was a very convenient target. "A _vampire hunter_ vampire who has no respect for blood or birth, no respect for the fact that he was granted _the privilege of continuing to live _-- "

"Kaname-sama does not want him torn to pieces," Ruka interjected sharply and Aido crossed his arms to sulk.

Kain leaned back in his chair and watched the Chinese countryside slip by them, then stated, "What could we have done, even if we'd been there? Kaname-sama intends to handle this in his own way. We don't know what he's thinking. I think we should leave it in his hands. When he needs us, we'll know."

"It's difficult," complained Aido, and then sighed and leaned forward on his elbows. "It's difficult not being able to do something."

"You just want to rush in on a white horse and shatter anything you think is making him unhappy," observed Ruka, who gazed into her tea as if she might tell their fortunes. She looked up at him critically. "Particularly when it is also making you unhappy. When has that ever pleased Kaname-sama?"

Aido leaned his forehead against the cool finished wood of their table and grunted, "That's _why _I'm not doing it."

-

The rails made a soothing rhythm that was not unlike a heartbeat, even, steady and comforting. In the cool darkness, in the room they kept as theirs, it could pull away all his troubles if he listened to it while she lay close to him, and he could twine up the sound of the train's heartbeat with the sound of her heartbeat and her breathing, with the sound of his own. But this morning it was not so.

As Kaname's eyes adjusted to the darkness he found her small body on the bed, still wearing her clothes from the night previous, on top of all the covers and curled against a panda bear that had come from a gift shop in Jinan. He moved to sit on the edge of the bed and folded his hands in his lap.

"Yuki," he found his voice lower and more strained with emotion than he intended, so he mastered himself and steadied it before continuing. "You'll catch a cold if you sleep on top of the blankets in your clothes."

She said nothing, but he knew she was not asleep, so he leaned over her and brushed the hair away from her neck.

Her eyes were closed, but they were closed too tightly for her to be at peace.

"What has upset you, Yuki?" he asked, his voice low, "Tell me. Whatever it is, it will be changed."

This was something he believed, although to believe it cut open something in his gut. If she required _anything _for her happiness, _he would provide it_, even if the thing she required was his absence. He would _make _himself give her anything, no matter what _he _wanted, no matter how _he felt_, because he loved her, and this, he thought, was the greatest expression of his love: to lie down naked and unresisting before her, and let her walk over him with bare feet.

"_I_ upset me," she answered unsteadily, rubbing one fist against her face. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you when I did -- when I did what I did. I didn't think. I just did it. I just did it without thinking. I didn't want anyone to get hurt."

"That is because you have a kind heart," Kaname answered her quietly, pulling her fist away from her face. "I'm not angry. You do not have to apologize to me for being yourself. I want Yuki to be Yuki."

"I hurt you," she insisted, "I never want to hurt you, Kaname." Yuki could feel it hanging in the air between them, although he would not say it, refused to recognize that it even existed -- "But I couldn't think of anything else to do -- "

"You acted rightly," he cut her off firmly, but softened his voice by touching her face with his fingertips. "If you had not acted, then ultimately, you would have been hurt, and this is not something that I will allow."

"_I love you,_" she shouted at him breathlessly, as if it were terrifying for her not cry it out, strange and half-crazed -- terrifying for him not to hear it at that pale, burdened moment -- as if it were a small light to ward away monsters in the dark. Her cry was muffled by the bear she buried herself against, but plain enough to hear to someone listening.

For a moment it was still, and there was only the sound of her ragged breathing. She raised her hand to touch his, lying delicately against her face like the brush of feathers, the touch-cognition of desperate, voiceless wonder. After a tentative, exploratory touch she laced her fingers through his and tried to regulate her breathing.

"I don't want the things that I do to make you unhappy," she tried again, softly.

"Nothing you do could make me unhappy," he answered, and this, in a way, was not an untruth because he believed it was so.

She shook her head against the mattress.

"What are you really feeling right now?" she struggled to drag his fears and wants out of him, rolling away from the bear so that she could look up into his face.

"Yuki," he answered softly, and his eyes shone faintly, like light through pyrope, "I love you."

"_Kaname_," she murmured in thready, hypnotic response, and then he leaned over her and pinned one arm over her head by their laced fingers.

He was slow and deliberate as he kissed her, controlled, feeling the curve of her lower lip against his, tasting its fullness slowly with his tongue until she whimpered and her lips parted, and he found her tongue as warm and pebbled as wet fruit. He felt her put her other arm around him. Her touch was light, her fingers painting nonsense patterns against his back. When her tongue grazed one of his fangs he drowned on the the warm thread of her blood, and after that, he lost all sense of time.

-

When he had left them the night previous, Yuki had been consumed by the terrible feeling that Zero had deserted them, a feeling that she was ashamed to have because she thought it was not right to have it, not fair to have it. She attempted to pretend her feeling was something different than what it was, that it meant something different than what it did, and so she made herself sick and worried and swallowed by guilt.

However, this singular fear was laid to rest shortly when Zero appeared before them at eight post meridian the following night, a nonchalant presence in the dining car, just another passenger -- one wearing an openly displayed firearm.

He sat down at a table, without invitation, next to Yuki, who had been poking thoughtfully at her fried duck with a fork. Kaname said nothing.

When Zero had the audacity to sit down, Aido abandoned his tenderloin and stood up irately.

"This is a _private _dining car," he insisted.

Zero didn't turn to look at him, but simply answered, "That's convenient."

Ruka's knuckles whitened on her dinner knife, but she made no other indication that she even recognized that Zero was in the room.

Kain glanced up at Aido, cast a look over at Ruka and then lightly touched her white-knuckled hand with his fingertips, shaking his head once before drawing away and leaning back in his chair to see what Kaname would do.

Aido remained on his feet, but as his fuming didn't seem to be accomplishing anything, at last he stuck his nose in the air with fine indignation and made a noise of ill content, just so Zero would be forced to acknowledge that he was not welcome among them. Zero ignored him, and Kaname seemed unlikely to say anything, so at last Aido sat down again.

Even after she had gotten over her immediate surprise, Yuki could not help but exclaim, "Zero! What are you doing here?"

That he was there in the dining car with them seemed an impossible thing, like sitting down to eat with Santa Claus or the Pumpkin King, but Zero just shrugged.

"Getting something to eat," he motioned to her duck, which she had abandoned in her amazement at his second coming.

"When did you get on the train?" she asked, her brows knit. It seemed incredible to her that he had followed them so closely, that he had boarded and ridden the same train, and yet she had not noticed him. But then, she had been preoccupied, thinking of Kaname, being with Kaname, worried, Zero, but Kaname, Kaname --

"At Beijing, same as you," he answered shortly.

"Why haven't I seen you on the train before now?" she asked, leaning forward on her hand. She did not really expect him to answer her questions, which likely had obvious answers. In another time he would have hit her on the head lightly with a composition book and suggested she figure it out for herself. To her surprise, he answered her like they were nice people who were sitting and having a nice dinner, not like she was _just Yuki_, who could be ignored and put off when it suited him. This made her happy, because she did not like to be put off.

"Because I'm not traveling first class," he suggested, and abruptly waved over a waitress who had appeared at last at the end of the car.

She smiled a little, and waited while he ordered something small from the menu. After the waitress had gone, Yuki turned her head to the side.

"You're following us?" she asked, still expecting him to give her a brush-off answer, something non-committal, a half-truth to cover his discomfort.

But all he said was, "Yes." It was short and brusquely offered. He provided no further explanation.

Her heart moved into her throat for a dizzying, confused moment, but then she struggled to make sense of his answer. He had been sent by the Association to watch them, or by the headmaster, who wanted to check up on his only daughter. He had come to dispatch some important information. There was someone dangerous on the move, and only he knew about it. Ultimately it did not matter at all what the reason was, not really. Zero was there, and that, she found, was better than him not being there, no matter the reason. Perhaps the only things that moved them together were accidents of fate. She was grateful for them.

"In that case, we're going to Haerbin next," she attempted to make pleasant conversation, "I've never been so far north."

"I haven't either," Zero said, and that was all he said.

The conversation might have fallen off, had Kaname not calmly interjected, "It's a beautiful city. It's the season for ice sculptures. If Yuki likes, you are welcome to join us, Kiryu-kun."

In some ways, Yuki was completely artless. She had no way of covering what welled up in her heart, and cried out, "Really?" before flushing and forcing herself to look at her plate.

Zero looked at Yuki, who would not look at him, and then looked at Kaname, who returned his gaze intently until Zero shifted his attention to Yuki's abandoned dinner.

"I think," he said slowly, "That I will."

At this Yuki looked up at him and smiled, open-mouthed and heedlessly gleeful, riding an elation high that had no use for sense or reason. Then she turned to Kaname and shared her smile. Kaname smiled back faintly, until she looked away from him, and then he stared at Zero again intently.

Zero rattled his knuckles against the tabletop once, then tapped the edge of Yuki's plate with an insistent finger.

"You should eat your dinner," he recommended absently, "Before it gets cold."

-


	3. Moments lost in time

Spoilers for Vampire Knight and Vampire Knight Guilty TV. Why can't I ever just skip to the good parts?

**Via Vincio: The Braided Way **

By Gabihime ( gabihime at gmail dot com )

_3 - Moments lost in time _

-

Once upon a time there was a goose-girl who was born a princess, who traveled far abroad in the company of her maid, on a journey to meet and marry a certain king.

While traveling, the princess became possessed by a great thirst and asked her maid to dismount and find a drink for her. The maid refused, and even doubted that she was a princess, and ordered that she should find her own drink. Because her thirst was so great, the princess dismounted and began to search for something to drink.

It was very dark and she searched for a long time, but she could find nothing to drink such as she was used to, so at last she came upon a small stream, a vein of water cutting through rocks, and she dropped to her hands and knees and drank from the stream like a beast until her thirst was sated.

In her breast pocket the cloth spotted by her mother's blood cried out, "If your mother could but see you, her heart would break in two!"

The princess could not think of any reply to make to the little drops of blood, so she made her way back to her horse and mounted, and she and the maid were again on their way,

-

As Yuki was suffering from travel fatigue - a product of the coupling of a stressful night and an emotionally exhausting day - she found that no matter how she tried to stay awake in the club car, playing old maid with Ruka and Kain, or rummy, which she was learning from Kaname, she kept nodding off asleep in between hands. She fought to stay awake as long as she could, because with Zero present the atmosphere in the club car was less like a jolly holiday and more like a Mexican standoff. While she _mostly _trusted her friends not to attempt to kill one another unless something _untoward _happened, she was worried about what they might each _individually _interpret as being untoward, particularly with Zero's tendency to draw his gun at a moment's notice and the issue of _stung _aristocratic pride.

So she did her best to stay awake, somehow sure that she could avert unnecessary bloodshed if she could just keep chatting. Kaname remained pleasant and polite, even to Zero, which she was grateful for. Zero was not particularly talkative and seemed to spend most of his time staring out the window, staring at her, or doing crosswords from a small, creased book. His motives and intentions remained a mystery to her, as he did not offer to talk about the reasons for his trip or the state of affairs at home. He did, however, civilly answer simple questions that were put to him, and once even had an extended exchange with her concerning one of the puzzle clues.

It was seventeen down, and a lynch pin clue, which many of the other answers depended upon: _"Misery acquaints a man with ____."_

Yuki could not immediately say, and suggested all number of answers, some entirely ridiculous, all which seemed to conflict with settled letters or were simply not long enough to fill the little squares of the clue. She was perhaps most proud of 'the Spanish measles,' which Zero suggested she had just made up. At last, after she and Zero had struggled with it for some minutes, Kaname softly interjected.

"Strange bedfellows. It's from," he said, after a thoughtful moment, "The Tempest." As Yuki did not immediately understand, he explained. "Shakespeare. It means that in times of trouble one may find himself with unlikely allies. It isn't meant literally, but figuratively."

Zero was not keen on taking Kaname's suggestion, but as he found nothing else that fit appropriately, he was forced to letter in the words or abandon his puzzle entirely.

And although Yuki attempted valiantly to remain awake and match up pairs of cards and provide insight into crossword clues, at last she passed her final threshold, and fell deeply asleep, her head cradled against Kaname's shoulder. After he was quite sure she was asleep he gently gathered her up in his arms and excused himself from the company, so he could see Yuki safely asleep in bed. Zero watched them go, but made no comment, only attempted to burrow his way further into his crossword book.

Kaname was gone from the club car for a long time.

After Kaname had gone with Yuki, Aido stared at Zero from a long time, then crossed the car to stand in front of him.

Zero paid no attention to him for some moments, before he spoke at last without looking up from his crossword book.

"Do you have a problem with me?"

"I think," Aido answered shortly, attempting to keep his temper in check, "That you ought to have learned your lesson by now."

Zero closed his book and looked up at Aido with hard, brittle eyes that glittered like raw amethyst. The look was so naked and mean that Aido almost fell back a step, but he stood his ground.

"What lesson would that be?" Zero asked, unmoving, as if he were an old thing, beaten and weathered and carved from stone.

"That you aren't needed any longer," Aido answered through gritted teeth. "You're a piece left over. The story is finished. Everyone is happy. There's no place for you. You're not wanted."

Aido expected Zero to draw on him, wanted to stare down the barrel of Bloody Rose in defiance, as if this would be the last nail in the coffin that _proved him right, _that delivered him _justification _for what he thought that he knew_._ But Zero just stared at him unblinking, unflinching, and then returned to his puzzle book. "That's not your decision to make."

Somewhat felled by Zero's inhuman display of humility and self-control, but still frustrated and angered by the impossible conundrum that Zero Kiryu presented, Aido sat down across from him helplessly.

"I don't have anything personal against you," Aido started, but then shook his head and corrected himself. "I have a lot of things personal against you. But you must know. _You must know._ There's no place for you here."

Zero looked up at him briefly, but it was as if his eyes were open, and yet he did not see. Zero was staring past him with eyes that were as hard and unforgiving as stone, and then Aido caught it: the faint taste of Kaname's blood on the air. The were both trapped in the moment, and then Zero looked down at his book again.

"It doesn't matter," he said. Then the moment weighed heavily on the both of them and Zero finished with no malice, simply tired resolution, "I'm here."

"But _why_?" demanded Aido, who was becoming overwrought because he was discovering that attempting to argue with Zero was like trying to argue with a mute toddler, or with a blank stone.

"That's none of your business," answered Zero flatly, and attempted to look as if he were busy with his crossword.

"Yuki," Aido supplied aloud without intending to. It was just there, on his tongue. He added, as a belated and nearly forgotten afterthought, "-sama."

It was just one word, but Zero looked up again and for a moment Aido was frightened of him, not because Aido feared for his own life, but because he feared what _Zero might do_, what Zero might be _capable _of doing that Aido would be helpless to stop. They had seen Zero and the monstrous light that had slain Rido Kuran. He was a vampire hunter who'd eaten his twin and drunk the blood of Kaname Kuran, of Yuki Kuran, and, by proxy, as Aido knew with sinking dread, he had also had the blood of Shizuka Hio, the Kuruizaki-hime, drawn through the wound on Kaname's neck. He could not deny it, as he'd seen all of these things with his own eyes. Let others consider Zero a feeble pest. Aido was not a fool.

Zero did not bear down on him with this malevolent gaze for long, as if such hate were difficult for him to hold together, so condensed and wretched. When he looked down again, Aido found that he had been holding his breath and resumed breathing with some shame and agitation.

But looking at Zero, an exile in a strange land, among those who hated him, or worse, simply refused to recognize his existence, Aido could not help but sigh and shake his head as he stood again.

"You're going to get hurt," he advised, and it was not a threat but a warning, honestly given. Aido gritted his teeth. He was worried for Kiryu again. _Why was he always worried for Kiryu when he should have been worried for himself, or for Kaname -- _

"Probably," was all that Zero said in reply, and Aido shrugged and went back to where he was wanted.

-

When Kaname returned some time later, he found the club car polarized. Kain, Aido, and Ruka were all sitting clumped together in a corner like conspirators, as far away as they could get from Zero Kiryu. Zero had not moved at all, as if he had no necessities to take care of -- a glass of water or the toilet, for instance. He just sat as if he were stone dead and worked at his crossword book. Kaname nodded reassuringly at the black cowl society in the corner as he entered the car and found their faces a mixture of worry, resentment, and faint shame, as if they had been discovered at something they would have preferred he not witness.

That would be Aido: sowing the seeds of his worries in Ruka, who was fertile ground when it came to concern for Kaname's well-being and personal safety, and Kain, who was not so fertile, except when it came to listening to Aido, who could be very convincing with his concocted Sherlockian scenarios. Kaname could appreciate Aido's care for him, but he was also well aware of Aido's faults, perhaps the least of which was doubting and second-guessing his motives, secrets, and carefully laid plans. In this way Aido could be very bothersome.

Kaname did not fear Zero Kiryu or his intentions. He knew that Zero could no more endanger Yuki for his own selfish ends than he could turn himself into a pigeon who lived underground. Such a thing was not possible, no matter what Zero might claim when wallowing in his own bitterness. This knowledge was not so much rooted in trust of Zero as it was in an understanding of what Zero was _capable of_, or at least, this was the way that Kaname considered it.

Zero had always been a troubling piece: one who acted more than was strictly necessary. In this way he was not so very different from Yuki. One fed the other and this had made them sometimes unpredictable in the past.

But that was done now and Yuki was his as she had always been his, not by virtue of his right, which was undeniable and incontrovertible, but by _her choice. _Aido's fears and Zero's presence were an irritation, not a threat, and one he was willing to allow if Yuki desired it.

Such was the form of his love, he had decided, and it was in his power to have it writ on the face of the world.

He was Kuran. He would not be defied.

Even by himself.

In the end, no matter what Zero wanted or thought he wanted, all Kaname had to do was wait. Yuki slept in _his _bed. Yuki found her strength in _his _blood. He could not doubt her. He would not doubt her. It was as if every time he saw her she was newly born, over and over again, for him, through him, with him. Every moment she gave her vow, fresh and undiscovered and ancient. It was the tribute he required.

Zero Kiryu could offer her nothing but his empty, passive, castrated attention, which Yuki might receive politely, but there was a limit to Zero's patience with polite distance; this was something Kaname was sure of. He would hang around like a stray dog until he could stand it no longer, and then he would crawl away, limp and beaten by a gentle and inoffensive hand, by the hand that he craved.

Yuki was his.

She would not give Zero what he wanted.

All Kaname had to do wait, and his patience was monstrous. It was not a thing that could be known or measured by man. Or by a thing that had once been a man.

-

Zero looked up when Kaname entered the club car and watched the three former Night Class students bow their heads to him in deference, like low rung wolves rolling over to show their bellies. The girl, Ruka, covered her heart as she closed her eyes. Aido looked frustrated. Akatsuki leaned back in his chair to watch what Kaname would do.

Zero had no need of watching their display further and turned his attention back to his crossword book to ink in another clue.

**LESSON**.

Six across. _Something to be learned or studied._

Many of the lessons that Zero had learned in his life he had learned with difficulty, through pain and misery, and sometimes through bleak despair. His master Toga Yagari had given up his eye as a sacrifice on the altar of Zero's weakness. His parents had been murdered before him, and he had been turned into a monster-thing, a creature he hated. Ichiru had been tormented by his kindness for a lifetime, before forcing Zero to make the choice that he could not make alone. He had finished his brother. He had not had the strength to finish the murderer of his parents. He still lived with the pulse of Shizuka Hio's filthy blood in his veins.

_"Don't hate Shizuka-sama!"_

_"I think that Shizuka-sama is happy that you were the one who killed her."_

His brother had loved that woman, that strange, inhuman specter: the princess of the madly blooming flowers, the petals that fell like snow, the kuruizaki-hime. He hated her as a monster, as a beast, as a thing that had tormented him for years, that still tormented him now, as a thing that had tried to rule him to bring about the turning of Yuki Cross. But he had eaten Ichiru, had taken back that other part into himself, and so while he hated her there was a part that could not hate her, no matter how he tried.

He did not love Shizuka Hio, but he could not spend his life drowning in hate of her.

She had loved Ichiru. That was a truth that Zero could not turn his eyes away from, although he wanted to.

He was grateful to her, grateful to the monster who had killed his kin. He was grateful for the fact that she had cared for Ichiru, who was his other flesh, but more importantly had been his brother.

Many of the lessons that Zero had learned in his life he had learned through hate, with pain, with misery, and with despair.

He had lived a life for revenge, had begun by digging two graves. He had been ready to run himself through on the spear that was Shizuka Hio, so long as she broke with his death. It was the only suitable punctuation for an abrupt, jagged, violent life. He had continued to live until he faced her sustained only by the sick, poisonous desire to see her dead before him.

_"A lover's pact?"_

There were times he hated that voice, the one that sang inside his mind and made him face things he rather would not see: that hate might be only a few steps removed from adoration, from supplication. He loved and hated himself in an uneven swing of scales that could only be reckoned by the eyes and fingers of Yuki Cross.

He still wanted her hands, her gentle hands, her eyes, her neck, the taste of her skin on his tongue, her mouth --

She was a vampire, a thing that he hated, a thing that he would see dead and buried, a monster who would eat the flesh and blood of the living.

But so was he, and she had no more chosen to be one than he had. And beyond and before she was a vampire or a pureblood or a Kuran, she was _Yuki, _and nothing could change that, not all the wishing in heaven. And nothing that Kaname Kuran said could change it, no matter how many times he said it.

_"She is surely a pureblood daughter of the House of Kuran. What will you do now, hunter?"_

He would do what had to be done to hang straight the crooked seeming of his universe.

He could hate himself, he could hate Yuki, but he could not hate her a drop in the ocean of how much he loved her.

This is because while many of the lessons Zero had learned in his life he had learned through hate and misery and despair, the most important he had learned through love. The love of his parents who had died fighting, died trying to protect him. The love of Ichiru, who had loved despite the frail meanness of his fate. The love of his master, who had given up an eye for him and demanded none in return. Her love. Yuki Cross. The star that lit the night when there was no moon. His love for her.

He had done with pushing her away. What had she saved his life for? Without her it was not worth living, a dry husk that left him yearning after a bullet in the chamber of Bloody Rose for his own mouth.

She had gone to stand beside Kaname Kuran, but this did not mean that he could not go to stand beside her.

She was the only thing that mattered in the world and he would humble himself before those he hated if it meant she would look at him. If he needed to let go of old hate to stand beside her, then he would do so or he would die. He was not troubled by these choices. They were the only ones he would allow.

He was not afraid of anything that Kaname Kuran might attempt to do to him. No suffering could equal the raw wound-agony of a future without Yuki's smiling face.

Zero Kiryu could face any humiliation, any punishment, any pain, any_thing_, if it was for the sake of Yuki Cross.

-

Kaname crossed the club car to sit in the vacant seat across from Zero. Zero did not look up and Kaname did not speak, and time passed this way between them for centuries.

-

From the station at Haerbin they went to their lodgings in the city: an old fashioned hotel that Yuki found immediately charming. Zero followed them, rode in their taxi, dragged his own luggage behind him. It did not amount to much, just a bag that he carried over one shoulder. He still wore no coat, no hat, no gloves, although the wind coming into Haerbin was born over the tundra of Siberia. Zero appeared impervious. She resisted the urge to offer him her own hat or gloves because she knew Kaname would not like it and Zero would refuse besides.

After they had settled their things safely in their rooms, Kaname proposed that they go to the central plaza to see the snow sculptures, as the night had just settled.

So off they went in taxis again, Zero bareheaded and still carrying his bag, as though it were precious and he distrusted being parted from it.

When they arrived at the square, Yuki was delighted. There were dozens of things to see, huge and beautiful and shaped in the snow by patient, careful hands. She saw an angel carved from the snow, and a handsome king with distant-looking eyes. She marveled at everything, gasping in delight and surprise at each new vista they encountered as they wandered along the paths.

She walked with Kaname, her arm through his, and leaned her face against his shoulder whenever she saw something that particularly touched her heart. Zero followed five steps behind them, stopping when they stopped and going where they went. The rest of the group followed at a much more comfortable distance.

After they had been in the snow-fairyland for some time, Yuki spotted an expatriate European cafe and asked to go inside so they could all warm themselves and talk over the things they had seen. Kaname acquiesced and they soon found themselves inside the warm, welcoming front room of the cafe.

Yuki drank hot chocolate, ate marshmallows and petite biscuits spread with jam, and generally enjoyed herself.

They were out. They were out, all together, and it was nice.

Kaname drank his steaming tea slowly and seemed to draw more joy from watching Yuki devour biscuits than he did from tasting them himself.

Zero sat a few feet away from them, in the corner, and drank his own cocoa.

And so time passed, and they passed it, and Aido explained to her how the snow sculptures were made, and she chatted animatedly with Ruka about the beautiful snow angel and the other snow ladies they had seen. Kain commented on the number of biscuits she ate and she laughed. Seiren was not particularly talkative, and kept all her attention on Zero Kiryu, who in turn seemed to pay little attention to any of them, save Yuki.

When the conversation lulled, she went to stand beside him at one of the wide, paned windows that was knit over with frost pictures.

"I have some things for you, Yuki," Zero said to her, as if she had always been standing there next to him, as if they had been in the midst of a pleasant conversation. He was looking out the frost-paned window at the snow sculpture outside. It was a mermaid, a little mermaid who had beached herself on the snow. "From home."

He did not miss a beat as he spoke, but it hung there. From home. _Our home._ Cross Academy. The place to return to. He was still talking.

"And I'd like to talk some things over with you, if you'll listen to me."

Yuki nodded and looked out the window toward the mermaid before slowly smiling. "I'd like that, Zero. I'd like to have a talk."

She could explain things to him then. She could explain all the things she had wanted to explain, had tried to explain but found the words lacking, her body hollow and voiceless. She could tell him everything, how things really were, how they really were, and he would understand and everything would be fine. _Everything would be fine. _Zero would stop hurting. Kaname would not be hurt. Everyone could be happy. All she had to do was explain the way things were and everything would turn out all right.

She did not consider that she had no idea what it was that she would tell him, or that he might have something to say to her.

"Kaname," she asked, tugging on the dark sleeve of his great coat, "Can I go talk to Zero for a while? Do you mind? We need to talk some things over."

Kaname looked at her with deep carmine eyes she could not read and then smiled briefly. "You don't need to ask my permission to do the things you choose to do, Yuki. Go and speak with him. Go out and have a walk among the sculptures in the plaza. You'll be safe there, with Kiryu-kun as your escort," he touched her arm as if she needed the physical confirmation of his good will before she would consider departing. He looked back at the gathered company and continued, "I have some things to discuss with Seiren. Enjoy yourself. Just don't be long."

Kaname looked at Zero over Yuki's head, and they stared at one another for a moment that moved by, pale and gelatinous, but then Kaname smiled again, fleetingly.

"I'll trust you to look after Yuki," he said.

Zero grunted, then put his hand on Yuki's arm and led her out into the snow.

After they had gone Seiren made as if to follow them silently, but Kaname raised his hand to stop her. She bowed her head obediently and retreated to the shadows.

Kaname stood at the window, watching them make their way through the snow for a moment, and then he turned his back on the glass and moved to sit down in a chair far from the door.

_"Compared to what has been," _he thought calmly, _"This will be a small storm to weather. Yuki must be allowed to be Yuki."_

He let her go wander among the ice castles with her Kai.

-

The plaza was beautiful, a fairy land made of crystal spun from water. There were castles and palaces, churches, buildings of state, heroic figures on horses, charging into history, and the forlorn figure of the little mermaid, beached on the snow.

All of the snow sculptures were lit by colored lights that illuminated them against the dark of the winter night. A forest of snow trees had real leaves of brilliant maple red. The fairy buildings all looked like places she might visit. The little mermaid cried icy tears that had frozen to her face. It was like wandering in a dream of signs and symbols that Yuki recognized, but could not interpret.

They walked for a while in silence, looking at the monuments made of snow, winding their way between them. Sometimes she stopped to look at something and he patiently waited until she had seen all it was she wanted to see, and then they continued on.

They stopped at last before an ice cathedral, and they stood looking at it in silence for a while.

"I have some things with me that are yours," Zero reminded her, and she turned to him, curious.

He fished in his bag and produced a handful of letters, as if he had become her new long distance postman.

"One from the headmaster," he said, counting through them, "One from Wakaba. One from the dorm president. One from Maria Kurenai. She's staying at Cross Academy for the time being," he explained absently, handing the fistful of letters over, "The headmaster is looking after her."

He did not say, _"Things haven't been stable among the vampires lately,"_ because that was a thing he did not need to tell her. Kaname's comment that she would be safe looking at sculptures with Zero Kiryu had not been an idle one. Yuki did not go anywhere without an escort and she rarely strayed more than a dozen feet from Kaname himself.

But she did not dwell on this now, not with the promise of these envelopes, cream and colored, which had private secrets to share. She took them happily, excited to have her mitted hands upon messages of a far-off home. She scoured the envelopes for clues to their contents, but they had no postage and no return addresses, just her name on them, in varying scripts, like gifts at Christmas. There was the headmaster's Baroque scrawl, and Yori's neat and friendly hand. She put the letters carefully in her pockets. They were all treasures she would pore over at length later, when she was in the warm tranquility and comfort of the room she shared with Kaname.

Her thoughts were still on the letters so newly in her care when Zero interrupted her thoughts again.

"And I brought this to you," he said gruffly. "You forgot it in your room."

It was the short silver staff of Artemis folded in on itself like the waning moon. Zero held it by a handkerchief that Yuki recognized she had given him as a present some years past, heedless of the fact that it still had the power to shock him, should he lay a finger on it wrong. Yuki just stared at it, stared at him, stared at the handkerchief. He kept standing there blindly, offering it to her open-handed, like water for a horse that would not drink.

She shook her head and then stammered, "I left it behind. Zero, it's not right for me anymore -- "

"It's yours," he interrupted, then shook his head, as if it was not something that he understood himself. "It's yours, but if you don't want it right now, I'll hold onto it until you do."

Zero carefully laid Artemis away, as if it were a relic that was enshrined inside the humble church of his battered leather bag. As he pulled his hand out of the bag she wondered what other abandoned treasures he might produce, but then heard the rattle of a box of buttons and saw him shake a couple of blood tablets into his hand, which he threw in his mouth as he tossed his head back, swallowing them dry.

Liquid courage.

He was trying to fight back the physical need of it, which was not particularly convenient at this moment.

"You can take them now?" she asked, a little cheered. She was happy to see him doing better, no longer buckling under the strain of such terrible, maddening thirst. Yuki knew what it was like to try and fight such a thirst, now, to try and fight it against all the wishes of a body that did not want to respond to your sense, to your reason. Zero did not deserve to be chained to such a destiny. "Your body isn't rejecting them anymore, I mean."

He shrugged and answered, "It's what I do."

Of course. It was what he did now. He didn't take her blood any more so what blood did he have, did he want --

She shook her head and wisps of hair flurried around her face. She wasn't thinking things that made any sense. It was good that Zero was taking the tablets. It kept things from being cruel and messy. Perhaps she should write to her father and ask him to send some to her.

_"It makes things better,"_ she thought, _"There are less things to fear."_

_"There are less things to feel,"_ her heart echoed back to her. _"He is cutting himself off from you. Will you cut yourself off from Kaname in response? This will not bring the happiness of anyone."_

She shut her eyes tightly to try and drown out the sound of the voice that delivered her difficult truths, and when the sound finally stilled, she tried again to speak to him as they had done before, in elder days, by a common hearth.

"So do you think you might tell me why you're here?" she asked, leaning forward and tilting her head, smiling cocksure and confident in an attempt to cover her unease.

"Yes, I thought that's what I'd tell you," Zero said very slowly, and she found he was looking at her hard. She flushed and looked away.

"So out with it, Zero," she demanded, waving her arms and trying desperately to grasp the absurdity of the situation. He couldn't make her feel this way. He was just Zero. She had helped to do his laundry. _She had folded his underwear_. He was not threatening. He was just Zero. Just Zero. "Are you on a secret mission?" she asked, "Did the headmaster send you to find out if I'm doing well? Why did you come all this way? I mean, the ice and snow sculptures are beautiful, but I bet you didn't just come sight-seeing. Are you on a training trip? Does anyone miss me at home? It'd be nice if we could all have ramen together again -- "

"I love you, Yuki," was what he said, very seriously, derailing her pleasant chatter. Her lip trembled because he had frozen her there, split her open, but he did not look away from the grotesque spectacle he had exposed, although his eyes softened in apology, as if he owed her one. "I should have told you a long time ago. That's why I'm here. I came to say what had to be said."

"Zero, don't be silly," Yuki tried to laugh and found her voice a little too shrill and unnatural, "You don't love me. You can't love me. You hate me. I'm a vampire -- "

"So am I," he answered her evenly and she threw her hands in the air.

"I'm a pureblood. I'm someone you hate. You want to kill me, remember -- "

"You're Yuki," he corrected her, "Yuki is Yuki. That's all that matters."

"You're not serious," she shouted at him, keening with panic, "Don't be crazy. Stop being crazy, Zero. You can't mean what you're saying. You know, you know everything that's happened -- "

"Yuki is Yuki," he repeated steadily. "That's all that matters to me."

Yuki took off her hat and waved it angrily at him, "Stop messing with me, Zero. Stop being strange! You don't know what you're talking about -- "

"_You had my blood_," he said fiercely as he grabbed her arm at the elbow and forced her to look at him. "You can't deny the truth that's in my blood."

"Zero," she tried feebly to wriggle away, "_Zero_. What's going to happen to us, Zero?"

"You saved my life," he interrupted her, and she was captured by his eyes again. There was a candle flame there, one that flickered as he spoke, a flame that licked at her. "Now I wonder what it is that you saved it for."

She could not answer him, had no words to tell him, no words that mattered. She stopped fighting, and he held her weight there as he stared at her as if she were a strange sea creature, newly captured from a vent in the briny, saltwater depths of the ocean.

"I can't live without you, Yuki," he said, and she knew this was not the crazed admonition of a demented lover, but a truth that was torn from deep in his guts. He was showing her handfuls of himself that he ripped out to exhibit to her so she could not look away from him, despite how he was suffering, _because _of how he was suffering. "I won't live. I refuse to live."

"Zero -- "

"Yuki, listen to me," he insisted, and shook her so that her panic subsided momentarily and she was forced to look at him again, the two of them standing there in the cold, her hair being carried behind her by the chill wind. "I don't want anything from you that you aren't willing to give. I just want you to let me stay near you. And," he took a deep breath, "I want you to recognize, just this once, who I am and what I've said to you."

_"You don't have to love me,"_ he was saying, _"Just recognize that I exist."_

It was not real, none of this was real, none of this could be real.

_"Yuki, what am I to you?"_

It was ringing in her ears.

He let her loose, let her stand on her own two feet again, and she hugged herself tightly as she watched him watching her.

"You're the one who saved this life," he was speaking slowly and very gravely. "And you're the one who'll decide what to do with it. It belongs to you, now. That means it's your responsibility."

"Zero," she begged and felt lightheaded again, "Be serious."

"I am being serious," he answered sharply, but the sound carried no malice. He shook his head and tried to soften his words. "I won't leave you now, for as long as I live. You have a choice to make, Yuki. Either you recognize me, or you'll have to kill me."

He unsnapped the buckle holding Bloody Rose in its holster and offered it to her, butt first, the silver chain dangling between them like a diamond necklace, or a sterling leash. She stood staring at him dumbly, her hands drawn to her chest. He stood perfectly still, carved from wood, carved from stone, hand gripping the cool metal barrel of Bloody Rose, refusing to move or to draw the gun away until she had made her decision.

"Zero," she pleaded, "I can't kill you. Don't be an idiot -- "

"_Yuki_," he said, and his voice was sharp and firm enough to stop what was in danger of becoming a hysterical episode. His eyes picked up the light from the sculpture behind them and glimmered. He was so terrible and serious she could hardly bear to look at him, but she could not look away, not from Zero. She could never look away.

"Think now," he said, "This is an important decision. You must decide. Either you accept what I've said, or you kill me. I won't," he looked away briefly and blinked once, twice, a rapid movement of his lashes, and when he looked back he was giving her a smile that was gentle and so private that she was almost ashamed to keep his gaze, but he had captured her eyes. She could not look away from him.

_"Never look into the eyes of a vampire, for they will devour your soul."_

She felt devoured, devoured and consumed. He had eaten her. He had eaten some essential bit of her, swallowed it whole and held it now, where she could not reach it.

"I won't blame you, whichever you choose, Yuki," he said, and she was lost against the low, uncertain roughness of his voice. "Make the choice that will make you happy. I'll accept your decision."

He stood there, and Bloody Rose glimmered like it was spun from snow. He would take a bullet for her sake, if she was willing to pull the trigger herself. She could not think. _She could not think._

All she could think of was Zero, a boy crouched alone in the dark of a room, hating the stench of his own blood, Zero, a man who had taken from her and given to her, a man who was stupid and awful and terrible at dealing with people, who was kind, and jealous, and had a wicked temper, and was gentle, was so gentle, always taking care of her. He gave to her more than what he took away, what she had given to him, a hand held in the dark and warmth at her back when the world was cold, and all he wanted was to be allowed to love her, to be allowed to continue living.

_"Zero, I want you to know that I'm on your side. I may not be the most dependable ally, but I'll be here, when you need me."_

"I won't," she sobbed and covered her face. It was all she could say. "I won't. _I won't._"

_"Yuki, what am I to you?"_

He did not withdraw the gun, but kept looking at her steadily.

Zero.

_Zero_.

He was Zero.

"Then you recognize me?" he asked, his voice low and uneven, as if he were struggling terribly not to give himself away. "You recognize what I've told you, Yuki Cross?"

She pulled her hands away from her face. She could not look away from Zero, not when he was standing there, bare before her. He had given her _himself_.

_"I want Zero to live,"_ she shouted at him, chilly tears drying on her cheeks from the force of the cold wind. The sobs trembled in her chest as she repeated, in a tone she struggled to master, "I want Zero to live."

"It will probably be very difficult," he warned her gently, and offered her the gun a last time, a brief push toward her fingertips.

She shook her head and fought to smile against the tears.

"It's always been difficult," she corrected, and he holstered Bloody Rose and put his arms around her quietly, briefly, an attempt to keep the rising wind off of her face. "It's always been difficult," she said again, and then sighed, "But that's the way it is. Thank you, Zero. Thank you for being Zero. You always giving me more than I'm worth."

"That's not possible," he answered her passionately, his eyes flashing ozone purple, the imprint-image of a lightning strike. Then he had collared himself and repeated in a more normal voice, "That's not possible." He took a deep breath, "I won't force myself on you, Yuki."

He released her from his firm, deliberate embrace and she found it strange to be standing on her own again. She was still dizzy, her mind spinning. She could not say which direction was up and which was down, which was ground and which was heaven. He put his hand on her shoulder to steady her, and she lifted a mitted hand to brush his bare fingertips in thanks. It was a casual touch, something that had come and gone between them a hundred times. She tried to smile again.

"But I'll be here," he continued seriously, "Whenever you need me."

She closed her eyes as she smiled at him and a last, unspent tear slipped down her cheek to dry in the wind.

"I'm tired," she said, and it was true. She felt a thousand years old. She turned to look at the cafe across the plaza and her hair whipped by her face, loose from her hat. He clamped a hand down on her hat and shoved it more firmly back on her head and she laughed, spent and exhausted. When she looked at him she found that he was smiling too, a little, just a very little, but Zero was smiling.

"Let's go back to Kaname," she said, and he nodded without answering.

They moved off across the plaza together, his hand on her back to keep her steady on the packed snow.

-

**Author's Note:** Everyone in this story needs therapy. _But not for the reasons you might suspect._ This is naturally based on the continuity established by the anime series, as denoted by the spoilers warning above. I may as well title the next chapter "All the things that happened that Kaname did not like."


	4. The walls of Eden

Spoliers for Vampire Knight and Vampire Knight Guilty TV. Pee pee warning. This chapter contains sexual situations.

**Via Vincio: The Braided Way**

By Gabihime ( Gabihime at gmail dot com )

_4 - The walls of Eden_

-

Once upon a time there was a goose-girl who was born a princess, who was on a journey across the world with her handmaid. The handmaid had already denied the princess once. Before the rooster crows she will deny her three times.

The princess had once already been the victim of a terrible thirst, and her handmaid had refused to help her. The princess had been obliged to find a drink herself, and wandered the dark woods alone.

After they mounted their horses again, they traveled on again for some time, until the terrible thirst again struck the princess, and she turned to her handmaid and said, "Please, my friend. I am very thirsty. Will you find a drink for me?"

The handmaid turned on her with cold eyes and answered, "I shan't. I'll not be your servant. You aren't a princess!"

And because the thirst was so terrible, the princess was again forced to dismount and go into the dark woods searching for something to drink. When she found something suitable, she drank again on her hands and knees like a beast, and the drops of blood that had come from her mother cried out.

"If your mother could but see you, her heart would break in two!"

Again the princess had nothing to say, and she at last returned to her horse, but her handmaid would not speak to her.

They set out again for the far kingdom in silence.

-

When Yuki and Zero wandered in, chill from their snow pilgrimage, they discovered that their return was not necessarily welcome. The master of the cafe, while originally pleased at the additional business he had received at such a late hour, had finally tired of serving Aido cookies and chocolates, and when they at last passed under the lintel again he informed them very firmly that they were closed and that they could again sample his hospitality no earlier than six the following morning. Kaname could not gently coerce him into remaining open even a few extra minutes, despite offering him considerable monetary incentive, and as Yuki had no desire for this picturesque business to become a scene of needless argument, she put her hand in Kaname's and told him that she was tired anyway, and wanted to go rest.

They gathered their things and were promptly expelled from the cafe. The lights were doused and the door was locked in the same movement, and so they were left to find a taxi in the wee hours, as they had not yet hired a car for Haerbin. As it was late, they were required to walk some ways in the cold night air before they found a taxi that would accept their fare. The taxi was small, and could only safely hold three occupants, so Kaname held the door for Yuki and then for Ruka and directed the others to continue looking for transportation. He got in the taxi last and gave the address of the hotel to the driver while Yuki leaned over Ruka's lap to make apologetic hand-motions at the vampires and vampire hunter who remained standing in the cold night-wind.

"Hn," said Aido, as he wrapped his arms around himself and watched the penitent Yuki recede into the darkness, "I guess that makes me feel a _little _better."

Zero looked at him briefly, then shrugged and walked off down the dark street, in the direction the taxi had gone.

"Where do you think you're going?" Aido demanded after him. It would be just like Zero to stupidly follow after Yuki on foot, even though he didn't even know the way --

"To find a taxi," Zero answered, and then looked back at Aido as if Aido's stupidity was a new and wondrous animal.

Aido made a face that was so indicative of _being gotten_ that Kain snorted and then clapped his smaller cousin on the shoulder.

"Come on," he said levelly, "Let's all look together."

-

The ride in the taxi did little to warm Yuki. The cold had settled in her bones and she shivered continually despite being nestled between Kaname and Ruka. Kaname attempted to rub warmth back into her arms, but this did not seem to do much good. She felt brittle, as if the cold had drawn her very thin.

Fortunately, the ride back to the hotel was not a long one, and at the front desk he made it clear that he required a pot of freshly brewed tea delivered upstairs. Then he picked Yuki up, which she did not protest, and excused himself from Ruka, who sat down in the lobby to assure herself that Kain and Aido returned safely and were not forced to sleep on the street like stray cats.

Kaname carried Yuki upstairs, unlocked the door to their room with some little difficulty, as she was still in his arms, and then deposited her on the other side of the threshold while he saw to the locking and securing of the door. He lay the key on the bedside table and brushed past her, as she stood, still shivering, by the door. He paused at the door to the bathroom to look back over his shoulder.

"Take off your clothes," was what he said, in a way that made it clear that there was no room for argument.

He disappeared into the bathroom and she stood there and felt very stupid.

After a moment and some rustling, Kaname's disembodied head appeared in the doorway. His brow furrowed when he saw that she had not moved.

"Yuki," he insisted, "Take off your clothes."

This time he did not disappear, as if he required evidence of her action before he went back to whatever it was he was doing.

She blinked sleepily, because she was still very cold and her feelings were all muddled.

"Um," she started, and then flushed a little, "Now?"

"Yes now," he answered promptly, seemingly unable to understand her hesitation.

"But, but," she tried, and felt very silly and very embarrassed at the same time. "You're standing right there."

"Yuki," he sighed, as he was finally beginning to understand. "I've seen you naked before," he tried to patiently remind her. "Stop arguing and take off your clothes," he said definitively, "You're wasting time."

Mutely, Yuki began to strip off her mittens, although she was cold so her fingers did not move very well and as a result she disrobed very slowly.

"Parts," she sniffled defiantly after a minute or two, "Only parts." She did not intend Kaname to hear this small rebellion, but the senses of a pureblood are very sharp. He appeared again in the door to the bathroom, took one look at her undressing and crossed the floor to meet her.

"No, you silly girl," he said and began to unbutton her coat. His frustration was eaten by his affection for her, and he wanted to put his hand on the top of her head. "I've seen all the parts of you. There's no need to be nervous now. I've got to get you out of these clothes."

He pulled her coat off of her, one arm at a time, and was surprised to find her wriggling half-heartedly.

"When?" she asked, and he saw that her face was very flushed. He was worried she might have caught a fever from being in the cold for too long, "When did you see all of me naked?"

At this he laughed gently and deposited her coat on the bed before returning to undo the buttons of her blouse, which were very small and delicate slivers of shell that he despaired she would never get off herself, with such stiff fingers.

"All of the time, Yuki," he reminded kindly, but firmly, so she would not begin her feeble struggles again. "Nearly every time you had a bath. Don't you remember? When you were small."

"Oh," she said absently, and thought on this for a moment while he patiently undid her blouse, but as he moved to push it back, over her shoulders, something new occurred to her. "But that's _different_," she said.

"You're the same Yuki," he answered, and pulled the blouse off her despite her philosophical dilemmas.

Her skin was beautiful, milky and faintly translucent, as lovely as the moon, penultimate and ready to wax. He wanted to stay there, running his hands over her, running his eyes over her, for all the rest of time that would ever be, but he restrained himself. Her skin was also as cool as marble, which indicated nothing fine about her state of personal comfort.

She was not Galatea, after all.

He knelt to unbuckle one of her shoes and as he did she tugged gently at his hair. He looked up, but continued to methodically unbuckle and unfasten and unzip her.

"You know," she observed. "I'm pretty cold. I don't think I've ever been this cold before."

"I know," he answered, and bent his head again. "You're unused to regulating your body temperature. I think your blood is holding at a temperature lower than a human could tolerate. That's why I need to get you into the bath so you can warm up."

"Oh," she said again, because this was also a new revelation. "Well, that's all right then."

"It wouldn't have been all right if it had been for another reason?" he asked her and gently pushed her against the bed, urging her to sit so he could take her socks and stockings off. He did not look up, apparently busy with her hosiery.

"Oh no, it would have been," she answered and then flushed again, because his point blank question had caused her to answer more truthfully than she otherwise might have, "It was just really sudden," she tried to explain. "I was just surprised." She looked down at his dark head, and saw him carefully stripping away the stocking from a foot he held gently and firmly by the ankle. It seemed like an act disconnected from her, which was probably more indication that the cold had made her a little slow. "Of course I want to be with Kaname-sama. I've been waiting for a long time. Although," she admitted with some honest and cold-induced puzzlement, "I really don't know anything. How to do anything. I should know right? I feel kind of stupid. Maybe I really am an idiot," she lamented.

He had by this point managed to take nearly everything off of her, save her underthings. He did not stare at her overly long, despite the faintly silly and ambling confession she had just made to him. It had quickened his heartbeat, made his blood rise, and it was very, very difficult to ignore her in this nearly overwhelmingly _adorable _and vulnerable condition, not with her openly embracing _complicity _in her seduction -- but as he touched her wrist to feel her pulse he knew he could not let her dwell in chill discomfort just to satisfy his own pleasures, even if she was not really in danger. He gathered her against him and carried her into the bathroom.

Bath first.

_Bath first._

He deposited her in the bathtub, which she discovered was lined with towels so her skin would not come in contact with the cold porcelain. They were then faced with the dilemma of _her underthings_. After all, _everyone _knew that you didn't wear your clothes when you were taking a bath. Yuki had learned that once when she was a toddler, and then again when the headmaster had taught her how to bathe herself again, so she was doubly sure of the facts. But although she was embarrassed, it never occurred to her to ask him to stop helping her, or for her to protest and claim some sort of self-sufficiency, because he was so obviously concerned with her welfare. More than being embarrassed, it made her feel very loved. It was like she was a little girl sick with the Spanish measles and Kaname was just trying to help take care of her.

She thought that was what he might do, if she really and truly did have the Spanish measles.

He leaned forward to thoughtfully divest her of her brassier and she flushed, but she was fortunately delivered from further embarrassment by a knock at the door.

Kaname was clearly _troubled _by the fact that he had been interrupted, but went to civilly answer the door regardless. While he was gone she closed her eyes as if she were about to do something momentarily unpleasant, like taking a bitter does of cough syrup, and managed to squirm out of her panties, and with some added difficulty, her bra. She expelled these from the bathtub and tried not to be nervous. She was the same Yuki after all, and he was just taking care of her.

Kaname returned to the bathroom with a pot of tea and some cups and saucers and paused for a moment in the doorway to look at her. He said nothing, simply looked at her for what seemed to be a long time, but was only a moment in their lives. He put the tea down on the counter near the sink and then leaned over her.

It was almost overpowering, having him lean over her like that, shivering, naked in the bathtub, while he was still entirely clothed and yet paying her such close, controlled attention. He leaned in close to her ear and hung there for a moment, breathing. He was smelling her. _He was smelling her_. She _could tell_ he was. This was somehow more embarrassing than just sitting naked in the tub.

"I bet I smell bad," was all she could think of to say, a weak and empty protest. She was tired and cold.

"No," he answered, "You don't." And then he had swept all her hair in his hands and she could feel him pinning it up.

Then he turned on the water, and her toes began to tingle as if she were being madly tickled by a thousand feathers tipped with pins.

"Ah!" she cried out, "The water is cold!"

"No," he corrected her gently, "It's very warm. It just feels cold because your senses are dulled. Wait a few moments. Your blood will warm up."

She obediently flopped back against the towel to watch the water fill the tub and warm her up. He sprinkled something into the water, then he knelt on the tile and began to roll up his sleeves.

"Bubbles?" she asked him curiously. _Bubbles are nice_, she thought inanely. She was still cold.

"Bath salts," he said. "You can't have both at once. You'll like them. I bought them for you."

"They smell nice," she said, because it seemed like the thing to say when receiving a present, even under unusual circumstances. Besides, they _did _smell nice. She liked them.

By this point the water was over her knees, and she wriggled her toes. He watched them wriggle for a moment, then poured a cup of tea.

"Will you drink it without milk?" he asked, and looked for a moment like he would storm out of the room and wrestle a cow if that was what she desired.

She smiled and nodded her head. "I'll drink it without milk."

He passed her a teacup and only let go of it once he was sure she would not drop it on herself.

She sipped at it. It was hot but it tasted very good to her, even without the milk. She swallowed and then sighed with contentment. She was beginning to feel not so very bad anymore. As her faculties were beginning to return to her, she could now take notice of several facts that had eluded her until this point. The most arresting one was

Kaname

was

_staring _at her.

He was crouched there by the side of the clawfoot tub, watching her breathe, watching her sip her tea, watching her wriggle her toes. He had rolled up his sleeves and undone his collar. His tie hung loose around his neck. The room was getting humid and warm from the bath. The mirror had already fogged up. She flushed and looked away.

"Is the water too warm?" he asked suddenly, and she shook her head.

"Good," he said, and nodded. Then he rose to choose a washcloth from the bath linens that were arranged on the shelf and turned back to her. He smiled at her comfortably. "Now," he said, "I want you to lie back and relax. I'll give you a bath. You can be an invalid a little longer."

"Oh," she said, because it was all she could think to say, and leaned forward, as if she might start out of the bathtub. "_Oh_. I'm sure I can manage on my own now. You don't have to do something like -- "

"_Yuki_," he said, and it was there, in his voice. She stopped protesting and swallowed her embarrassment mutely.

"I want to care for you," he explained, and then dipped the washcloth into the warm, salted bathwater.

_Accept my care_, is what he said.

She closed her eyes and leaned back again and although she was at first tense, she found that pretense fell away as he turned her face toward him began to gently cleanse it, working the warmth into her. As he moved to her neck and shoulders she felt like a puppy being washed, and she gave herself over to it, limp and agreeable. Although her heart sometimes beat more quickly, he paid no _special _attention to any particular part of her body, but he did pay _thorough _attention to every part of her body, in that he made sure she was clean and warm.

When she squeaked and shied away from his touch because he aimed to clean a sensitive area, he said simply, "Yuki," and she behaved herself again and tried not to be too, _too _embarrassed, or too, _too _interested, as he had made it very clear that they were in the bathroom for the purpose of Yuki being bathed, and she did not want to seem, well, _wanton_.

She had never been wanton taking a bath as a little girl. Not even as a little vampire girl, she didn't think. But then, having Kaname near her in the bath had not been strange then, although she had already known of and delighted in growing up to be his bride. But she did not have a boat or any seadragons to sail along on the interior sea of soap and bathwater these days. Perhaps that was why she was more easily distracted.

Kaname had finished carefully washing her feet, mindful that he did not tickle her, and sat back on his heels.

She lay her head against the side of the tub and thought aloud, "Onii-sama. Kaname-onii-sama." Her eyelashes fluttered and she smiled. "I'm sorry if you don't like it. It just feels nice to call you that sometimes."

"I don't mind it," he said, and his voice was strangely low and unnatural. She craned her neck to look at him, flailing one arm out of the tub in her attempt. He caught her wrist as she did and helped her get her balance before brushing his lips against her open palm. "Yuki is the same Yuki," he reminded her.

She smiled and lay back against the tub again, soaking in the water. She had given up her tea long ago for the warm, tepid wonder of the full bath.

As she lay there, warm and lazy and content, her mind wandered back to Zero, standing hatless and coatless in the snow.

"Do you think Zero is all right?" she asked without opening her eyes. "I just worry about him, because he's not even wearing a coat or anything, and I got so cold -- "

"I'm sure he's fine," Kaname answered calmly, but she was still troubled.

"Are you _really _sure?" she asked, biting her lip.

"If it will put your mind at ease, I'll go make sure," he said, and then rose and quietly left the bathroom.

She heard the keys rattle and then turn in the lock, and then heard the door close behind him. She blew some of the wispy hair that had not been successfully pinned out of her face, but it fell right back into her eyes again. Then she leaned forward and pulled out the stopper so that some of the cooling water drained out of the tub so she could fill it again with hot water.

It was still filling when Kaname returned. He smiled when he saw her efforts to extend her stay in their private spa and sat down again on the floor near her.

She looked up and he nodded, so she breathed a figurative sigh of relief and then relaxed again in the tub, waiting for it to refill. When it neared the overflow mark Kaname leaned over and shut off the water, and then they sat together in silence.

"Do you remember," she asked as her mind wandered, "When I locked myself in the bathroom accidentally?"

He laughed at this, a genuine and unexpected sound. "I didn't think you remembered that. You were so very small."

"I remember!" she insisted, and splashed a little in the water.

"You had turned the lock without meaning to, and when you couldn't open the door again you sat down on the other side of it and just cried and cried. We all ran to get you," Kaname remembered aloud, and his tone was nostalgically fond. It was easily as comforting as the water. "But we didn't expect you to have locked yourself in the room. Father went to get a screwdriver, but I couldn't stand it, waiting and hearing you crying, hearing you afraid, so I just turned the knob until it broke, and you came running right to me." He laughed again quietly, "That wasn't the only time you locked yourself in a room like that accidentally, you know. Mother used to say that you did it on purpose, once you learned that I'd come."

"I don't remember that part," she wrinkled her nose, but then smiled, "You always came running, whenever I was afraid," she agreed, then thought about it. "You must have broken all the doorknobs in the house."

He paused, then answered, "I think I did."

She laughed and closed her eyes again. He spoke next.

"That's why I told the headmaster to take all the locks off the interior doors in the house. I was afraid you'd start locking yourself into places again, and I wouldn't be there to let you out." He looked at the top of her brown head, at the hair piled up on it, and then laid his hand to rest there before continuing. "But then there weren't any working locks on any of the doors the headmaster's house, and you were always following me. I went to the bathroom -- "

Yuki shrieked and covered her face with her hands. "Don't tell this story. It's so embarrassing!"

"It isn't embarrassing," he disagreed, "It's about you, so it's wonderful. Besides, I'd only tell this story to a very important person." She made another little groan, which he ultimately enjoyed, before continuing "I had gone to the bathroom and left you playing in the parlor, but then there you were, standing behind me with the door wide open. How I didn't hear you -- "

"I didn't want to be apart from Kaname-sama," Yuki protested, and found herself explaining against her will, "And I didn't understand that it was bad to follow you. You never told me not to follow you, so I went where Kaname-sama went. And then," she turned crimson and tried to hide her face in the water. "_I saw you going pee pee._" This last part was delivered like a mortified grade-schooler reliving her most embarrassing social faux pas.

"I was startled," comforted Kaname, who was laughing at the memory despite Yuki's discomfort. "I wasn't angry. I was just startled. Fortunately I had buttoned my trousers again before the headmaster came shrieking after you."

"I just didn't understand," she tried again and he stroked her head. "I didn't understand anything. But afterwards, after the headmaster had explained that it wasn't polite to follow people when they went to the bathroom, I remember you told me that I could always follow you, that you didn't mind. That made me happy, because I was afraid I had made you not like me."

"You're a silly girl," he said fondly, and ran his hand over the silken knot of her hair, down the back of her head, and then let it rest, cupping the nape of her neck. "And eventually you did stop following me to the bathroom."

She blew distressed bubbles in the bathwater. "Of course I did!"

Her momentary moral outrage subsided as she became lost in thinking of her past. She looked at the water dreamily for a few minutes and then softly spoke.

"When was it that I changed?" she asked, "From Yuki to Yuki? When did I stop being the Yuki who locked herself in rooms and followed Kaname-sama to the bathroom? Did you know, when you came to see a different Yuki? Were you sad when you realized one Yuki was gone?"

"You're always changing," Kaname answered very slowly, "From Yuki to Yuki. You're still changing now. I love Yuki. Every Yuki. I have always loved Yuki. I always felt as if I had been granted a treasure from heaven. Yuki is that treasure. To see you change and grow has been the greatest joy of my life."

"A long time ago," she said, then she stopped and shook her head, "Or not so long ago. I don't know how to think of it. I met a boy who was alone because his parents had been murdered by a bad vampire. He was very hurt, and he hated himself. His important person was taken away from him, and he was left all alone, and he was afraid to be loved. He hurt, but he kept secret that he hurt, and didn't tell anyone. He just carried that burden all alone. I wanted to help him carry his burden, because although he sometimes seemed scary, he was really very kind. I don't know how many people realize that. He's a very precious person."

She stopped because his hand had stilled on her neck, and she turned to look at him with a mixture of confusion and sadness.

"Onii-sama," she said. "I've always loved you. Always, from the very beginning. From each and every beginning. I want to do everything I can to make you happy, because I never want to see you alone, I never want to see your unhappy face again. It hurts me. You've had enough sadness. I want you to smile."

"_Yuki_," he whispered, his voice low and husky, and he gripped the muscle that spanned the place where her spine met her collarbone.

She was breathing unevenly, and her voice wavered uncertainly.

"Onii-sama," she repeated, and this gave her comfort, because she felt that this was a bond that nothing could break, "Can you love the Yuki who wants Zero to smile?"

He closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against her warm shoulder, smelling the scent of her wet flesh and the bathsalts, feeling the heat of her body against his skin. It beat between them, the blood, the smell of his fear, the scent of her guilt, the rose scent of the water, the rosy pink of her flushed body, and the slickness of her wet skin, and then he had wrapped his arms around her and was holding her as tightly as he could, as if he could crush her into himself.

"_Yuki_," his cry was soft and terrified, as if he were a lost boy, and he held her as if he would break her.

Hearing him, she began to cry, sobbing pitifully, "_You hate that Yuki. I knew. You hate that Yuki._"

"_No_," he cried low, into her neck, and it was painful, it was terrifying and it was painful. "_No. I love that Yuki._"

And they both cried, and they both panted, wanting air, and he held her like she might dissolve into nothing, and she clung to him, naked and wet and sobbing, until the bathwater had gone cold again.

"I love Yuki," he said again quietly, after they had gone still, and it was an affirmation for both of them.

Then he picked her up out of the water that was December-cold, and he carried her away with him, out of the bathroom, and delivered her into his bed.

-

In a room lit by the pale and vermilion tremble of candlelight, he laid her down in the bed, which was full and downy deep. It was dim in the room, and they had no use for electricity, although the fingers of dawn were beginning to creep at the horizon. Their seduction was not very organized, as it had not been planned in advance, although it had been _premeditated _in some senses, and he distractedly shoved her coat in the floor as he struggled to untie his shoes and unbutton his shirt at the same time. She began to get chilly, as she was still damp and the room was cool, so she sought refuge under the blankets, sending more of her patiently folded clothing into the floor.

Under the blankets there was heat and warmth and a familiar-unfamiliar scent: two bodies close to one another, and his long fingers read the pebbly-pliable texture of her skin, counted the places and the spaces between places, as if he were measuring her with his hands, discovering and rediscovering her, manic, and deliberate, and barely controlled, an addict finally given access to this elusive drug. Her hands and her mouth discovered him, curious and haphazard and intensely devoted. She tasted the salt on his skin, and rubbed her cheek against the hard line of his hip bone. He indulged in all her tender mysteries, and she gave them up, crying and crying his name, all the names she had ever given him, because it gave her pleasure to lose herself in the sound, or because he wrung it out of her, or because she wrung it out of him. He tangled his hand in her hair and pushed her head down and she bit him and was bitten repeatedly. They licked some wounds closed and other wounds open, and it was always messy and sometimes painful and a little awkward but brilliant like an eclipse.

They did not find themselves spent and exhausted until long after the master of the cafe would have allowed them back in for tea and biscuits.

When he finally curled himself around her limp, moist body, she responded by feebly wriggling toward him and dazedly murmuring, "Onii-sama, I think everything is nice."

"You're a good girl," he commented into the back of her neck and breathed in the feeling of her closeness, until he at last went to sleep.

-

**Author's Note: ** Thanks for all the kind feedback again. I am committed to writing this story and am pleased that other people are enjoying it. I appreciate that readers may be rooting for Zero or Kaname (or maybe just for Kaname x Zero XD) but as the one spinning this yarn, I can't do that. Don't worry, things are going _all according to plan_. For good or for ill, this is a story about two men and one girl, and no one ends up shot in the head (or thrown off a train like third class mail).


	5. Epistles

Spoliers for Vampire Knight and Vampire Knight Guilty TV.

**Via Vincio: The Braided Way**

By Gabihime ( gabihime at gmail dot com )

_5 - Epistles_

-

Once upon a time there was a goose-girl who was born a princess but denied her birthright by her maid and traveling companion. She has already been denied twice. When the clock strikes twelve she will lose her enchantments and turn into a goose-girl.

After having dismounted her fine horse twice already to sate the burning thirst that pushed her nearly past reason, the princess again found herself victim to this terrible feeling. When she asked her maid to fetch her a drink one last time, the maid refused haughtily, and struck the goose-girl-princess with a little switch of wood she had been using as a riding crop.

"I won't fetch and carry for someone common like you. Get it yourself."

The princess dismounted and again searched for drink in the dark, black woods. She found something satisfying at last and drank her fill with an almost greedy passion.

"If your mother could but see you," cried the drops of blood, "Her heart would break in two!"

The goose-girl did not know what to think of the drops of blood. She had only done what she needed to do to continue living.

When she found her way back to her maid she found that the maid had dismounted from her old horse and mounted the princess's fine horse.

"Get on my old nag," commanded the maid, who had become a princess, "She suits you well enough."

And so the princess found that she had become a goose-girl.

-

The morning-evening after the snow sculpture tour, Zero's blustery hurricane-force confession, and Kaname's gentle bathtub ministrations, Yuki found that she did not want to get out of bed until long after the sun had set and the moon had risen to prominence. Kaname appeared to be delighted to indulge her whims, so he sent down the commandment that this day should be a day of rest and ordered room service for them. Yuki opened the shutters on the windows so that the evening starlight filtered in. As the night drew on she lay on the bed in her pajamas eating egg salad sandwiches and reading letters until she finished with all of them, and then watched Chinese television until she exhausted herself and fell asleep again with dawn pinkening the horizon. Kaname alternated reading from some dusty and important looking volume of literature and watching television with Yuki. He found it to be a very enlightening and peaceful experience.

-

The first of Yuki's letter came in a pale yellow envelope and bore her name in a familiar and ornate scrawl. It was written on lined stationary with flowers and butterflies around the border and smelled of peonies. The headmaster's script was delicate and spidery, and a little smudged in places, as if he had cried over his letter while writing it, which did not really surprise her.

-

My dearest daughter Yuuu~ki,

I hope this letter finds you well, with your eyes wide and bright as you spend your time rushing from one thing to another, anxious to see all the things in the world before they change, and become new things. One thing that I always regretted as I watched you grow was that I could not show you all the things a little girl should see, like rainbows shimmering in the mist of waterfalls, or the fields of snowdrops, when they begin to bloom in the spring. I wanted for us to sit in the warm, summer grass for always, while I taught you how to weave flower garlands and daisy chains. But time is always creeping past us, whether we take notice of the minutes or not, and before I knew it you were no longer a girl who could be contented only by making flower garlands and daisy chains with your father, because you had grown into a young woman who wished to make flower garlands and daisy chains for all the people that you met. I wanted to keep the terrible outside away from you forever, if I could, but no individual person has the right to take choice away from any other person, no matter how much they love that person, and no matter how much they want to protect them. From the beginning, I knew that one day Yuki would want to wake up into herself, and then I would have to do the best I could to protect the person she had become.

She had become a daughter who was brave and courageous, who was always putting herself heedlessly into danger to protect others. Some people would call that idiotic and weak-minded, a result of poor judgment, but I have always loved my idiotic daughter, even when she brought home failing test scores year after year. Honestly, now that you have more free time you should devote at least _some _of it to studying. I know you are good at many things, but Calculus is also important. Just think what will happen if all the vampires in the world start thinking of you as '_Kuran-princess, beautiful and kind and lovely, but sort of a moron_.' I don't want Yuki to change from her wonderful, lovable self, but it would probably be good if you understood about oblique angles.

But even if you aren't any good at maths (or science, or history, or literature) you are still an amazing person. You are very kind, Yuki, and the riches of kindness and love are the greatest treasures, and assets, that any person could wish for, no matter how long their life might be. Always remember your charity and good will, and don't ever be afraid to come between others who are fighting. Often we fight because we do not understand one another, not because we are incapable of understanding, but because understanding is difficult and scary, and because it is easier to fear. I believe that when we truly understand and respect one another, we lose the fear that makes us seek to hurt one another. Try to educate others on this important truth, Yuki, because even if your marks were never very good, you will make a fine teacher of the things that are most important to us as human beings.

Vampires are vampires, but they are also human beings. Peace and love are things we teach by example. Sometimes teaching others is very difficult, but I have faith in you Yuki. You have the will to do anything.

Try to keep your temper mostly, but don't be afraid to let it loose sometimes. To always bottle your emotions will make you sick and tired and old, even if you continue to look the same as always. When you do get angry, forgive and seek forgiveness as soon as it is within your power, and remember that people often hurt themselves as much as they hurt one another. Never let the sun go down on your anger. Turn your hurt into love whenever you can. The one comes in handy much more than the other in a difficult world. Always be willing to forgive yourself of the things that you do. Regret is never anything but a stone around your neck. Never dwell on mistakes that have caused pain, but instead seek to change the world, and yourself, so such mistakes are not repeated.

Remember that you are human and that you have faults, but that these faults make you wonderful. It is the differences that we all have that give us the capacity to love one another. Never bury your heart in the soil, Yuki. You are a beautiful person. Love with an open heart. This will open more doors to you than anything else ever will. Love others. Love yourself.

It is never wrong to love someone. Never regret it. You are you, and I am very proud to be your father. I know in my heart that Juri-san and Haruka-san are proud of you too.

Please try to take care of Zero. He has never been happy away from you. I hope the two of you will be able to work out your differences and both find happiness. I love you both very much. Also, please take care of Kaname-kun. I am afraid he cuts himself off from the world. As you discover all the ways in which the world is beautiful, try and kindle this light in his heart. There are many things worth caring about in this world. I know you will show them to him, one at a time. I have faith that you can be happy, Yuki. Don't ever be afraid of your happiness. The joys of living are often very simple.

Speaking of Zero, he has one of papa's credit cards, so please try and make sure he doesn't spend too too much money, or your family will become poor and destitute. Make him practice restraint, Yuki. Don't let him buy anything too expensive and make sure he's keeping all his receipts! Papa has to collect all of those for book-keeping purposes.

Please try and think of your father sometimes, Yuki. You're always in my heart, and although time and distance may part us for now, I know that our family will be together again in the future. When you think of it, write a letter and send it home, because I want to know in your own words how you are feeling. Ask Kaname-kun to post it for you, as he will double-blind it so you can travel without fear of being tracked by anyone who may bear you ill intent.

I have enclosed some seeds from our garden. When you find a place to settle for a while, plant them and see what grows. It's always love that grows, when you plant a garden.

Please take care of yourself, and remember that I will always remain your loving father,

Kaien Cross

XOXOXXOOXXXOOO

P.S. Everything is going fine-fine! with the rebuilding of the academy, so don't worry about it. Everything will be back to normal before you know it!

XOXOXOXOXOXXXXOOOXXO

KC.

-

The second letter came in a blue envelope that was marked with her name in round block print. There was a small bunny in the bottom corner of each page, and Yori's handwriting was both friendly and familiar.

-

Dear Yuki,

It's already been nearly three months since we said goodbye and you left Cross Academy. I know in my heart that you're doing well wherever you are, but I can't help but miss you now that you're away. I keep our room tidy and clean, in case you come back, but I understand that our paths may have divided for a while. I go see the headmaster nearly every day after classes have finished. He's doing well, Yuki, so try not to worry about him. I know he misses you very much, but he seems very positive about everything, even when things aren't going smoothly.

Some of the students have withdrawn and gone home during the efforts to rebuild the buildings that were damaged or destroyed, but enough of us have stayed that the headmaster has said that he definitely won't have to close the school. There are a lot of people helping out at school now, people from the Hunter's Association, and even some people from vampire families. We've started having a class once a week to educate us on the history of humans and vampires. Your father has been teaching it. I guess he figured that with all the things that we saw and felt, it was better to tell us the truth than to tell us nothing. Then we'd have just believed whatever rumors and gossip that we heard. The headmaster always talks about a peace that we can build ourselves, between vampires and humans. Sometimes living at the academy, even during the terrible parts, it's hard to believe that humans and vampires were ever at war or that war might begin again. I look over and just see my schoolmates, not monsters. Vampires can be scary, but people can be scary too. I don't think all vampires are the same any more than all people are the same.

Maybe that's the most important reason the headmaster started Cross Academy. Even though I was always afraid of vampires and distrusted the Night Class, when you told me about finding out about your past, I knew I could never be afraid of you. Yuki is my best friend and will always be my best friend. You aren't some strange monster. You're Yuki. So I can't ever listen when anyone talks about "those vampires" and "what _they _do" anymore. I wish people would realize what they're saying. It makes me so angry to hear people talk like that. Headmaster Cross says that it never helps anything to get angry at those people, and that what we have to do is try and _teach _them that they're wrong, not just tell them that they're wrong.

I guess in some ways I understand. I wasn't always charitable about the things that I didn't understand. When everything was happening, all I wanted to do was help you, because I could tell you were hurting, and sometimes hurting badly, but I could never think of any way to make it any better. It was hard seeing you suffer and not understanding what was wrong. I want to apologize to you for being so insensitive. I should have understood your pain and worry sooner, and without you having to tell me. I want you to know that I care about you very much, and I just wish I had been able to help you more than I did. I guess sometimes even when we want to help badly, there's nothing we can do as individuals. Since I can't be there with you now and help you with your problems, I'm going to try and do my part here, in place of you. And I'm going to make wishes every night so that I can put my heart into making sure you're doing well. I'll do my best with the power of positive thinking.

Zero has been pretty distant in the time since you've been gone. He was never very friendly to anyone but you, but he's kept to himself more than usual, especially since he isn't a prefect anymore. That's why I was really surprised when he met me one day after class and told me he was leaving school to go and meet you. He asked if I had anything I wanted to send to you, which I thought was really nice of him. I guess even though he seems to be cold and scary, he may be a thoughtful person. Of course, that might also be because it was about Yuki. He is always different when it comes to Yuki. I hope you can help him like you always do. Sometimes I have to wonder how grounded in the real world he is. He seems to never think to do a lot of the things people do, like smile, or be happy, or want to eat ice cream. Maybe you can work on him a little so he stops thinking that vampires are the only things in the world. Well, Vampires and Yuki. I think he probably would have been expelled from a normal school already. I guess that's why he was a student here.

I know you left with Kuran-san and the others, and I hope they've been being nice to you. I mean, I imagine Kuran-san is being nice to you because he was always being nice to you, and I guess Hanabusa-san is... I'm not sure what word to use to describe him. Sparkling? I suppose sparkling is nice, except when you're trying to do anything but pay attention to Hanabusa-san, when it would get distracting and maybe even annoying. He was always like that in public. Is he like that all the time? I would think it would make you tired if you were _sparkling _all the time. Akatsuki-san seems very serious and dependable, so that's probably better than sparkling. I hope Souen-san is being kind to you. I always thought she was a little scary. She seems like one of those women who might be in a horror movie, the kind who creep slowly toward you, with their eyes rolled up in their head. You know what I'm talking about? I know she's probably really nice in private, but that's always how I picture her. Creeping up after you,

-

At this point Yuki stopped reading the letter because her heart had chilled and the air in the room seemed noticeably cooler. The sounds of the city seemed incredibly distant, and she almost choked on the silence. She trembled and took a deep breath and then slowly turned around and was horrified to discover --

absolutely nothing. Kaname glanced up at her, and seeing her breathe a noticeable sigh of relief smiled, and feeling reassured by his smile, she turned her attention back to Yori's letter.

-

but that's probably silly. She's a vampire, so why would she have to be like that anyway? If she wanted to get you, I bet she'd get you in a different way. Maybe with poison. Make sure you take special care of yourself, Yuki. I don't want anything to happen to you. Maybe if Zero is with you get him to taste your food before you eat it. I don't think anything can hurt Zero. Not even poison. Even the kind of poison a vampire might use.

I was just thinking about it because we're reading about _l'__affaire des__ poisons_ in history. Don't let me make you nervous, Yuki. I just worry about you. Remember what we learned in phys. ed. self-defense class: always be aware of your surroundings.

Anyway, I want you to know that I really love you and am always thinking of you. Don't worry about things here, because I'll take care of them, so that when you're ready to come back home, everything will be ready for you. I know you will come back home someday, Yuki, and I know in my heart that we'll meet again. Do the best you can for yourself until then, and don't be afraid to be selfish sometimes. I don't think you're as selfish as you should be. Sometimes you can't just spend your time thinking of everyone else and making everyone else happy. Sometimes you have to think about making yourself happy.

Be happy where you are, Yuki. I'll be happy here.

That way we'll both be happy together.

Your friend for always,

Sayori

-

The third envelope was cream-colored and crisp, as if it had been starched. Yuki did not immediately recognize the handwriting on the face of the envelope and had to open it and scan to the bottom to confirm the sender. The letter was relatively brief.

-

Cross-san,

When Wakaba-san told me she was writing a letter to you, I knew that I had to send one as well. From everyone in the Day Class I would like to extend deepest gratitude and most sincere thanks for all the work you did to protect us when you were acting as a prefect. We didn't know what great risks you were always taking to keep us safe, and we never appreciated the trouble we gave you as individuals, and as a group.

I would like to extend my personal thanks to you too. You were never anything but kind to me, and you helped make my job as dorm president more pleasant and more manageable than it would have been otherwise, even though, as I recall, you were always breaking plenty of rules yourself.

Please also extend our thanks to the members of the Night Class who protected us during those most dangerous moments. They have mostly departed from the school now, so I must count on you to pass along our thanks and our good will.

You are a kind person, Yuki Cross. I wish you good luck in your future endeavors, and hope that some day you may consider continuing your education.

With respect and sincere thanks,

Ayako Fujimori

Corona Dorm President

-

The final envelope she had to open was lavender and smelled of perfume made from violets. The handwriting on this envelope was very delicate, and although she did not recognize it, process of elimination told her whose letter remained.

-

With humility, to her highness the Kuran-princess, Yuki-sama,

Let me be the first to congratulate you on your engagement to Kaname Kuran-sama. It's a rare and blessed occasion when two purebloods wed, a lucky event that will hopefully bring peace and happiness to all of the Night Clan.

At this moment, we could all use some peace and happiness, Yuki-sama. I'm not sure of how closely you've been following politics since you retired from Cross Academy with Kaname-sama, but the Night Clan is facing a loss of stability and unrest as a result of the actions taken by your noble fiancé and others. Immediately before the death of Rido Kuran-sama on school grounds, a decapitation strike was carried out on the Most Honored Elder Council of Vampires, the ruling body of the senate, presumably by forces loyal to your family who perceived of the Elder Council as a threat. This bloody strike deprived the Night Clan of many of its most distinguished elder statesmen, who have been guiding the destiny of the Night Clan for years, preserving peace between humans and vampires, and arbiting disputes between vampire families, so that everything may remain peaceful.

It is not my intention to pretend that the members of the Elder Council were innocents. Although my experience with the world of politics is limited, I am well aware that forces inside the Elder Council did many cruel and sometimes unjust things during their rule. I do not claim that their governance was perfect, but their rule allowed countless massacres of both humans and vampires to be averted. The Elder Council of the senate is the sovereign, ruling body of the Night Clan. We chose to form this sort of government so as to stop the tragedies of the past from repeating themselves. The senate guides the Night Clan through the consensus of many, so that many people have a voice, and that the many peacemakers are heard above the few despotic warmongers.

But now the world has been thrown into chaos again. With the brutal and unexpected execution of all but two of the members of the Most Honored Elder Council, the senate has dissolved, and the senators are too afraid to reconvene it. Everyone is living in fear. The survivors of the Elder Council, whom I believe survived because they were not present at the senate on the night of the attack, have barricaded themselves in their estates and surrounded themselves with their small, private armies. The other senators have followed suit. There is distrust and fear and tensions are running very, very high.

The senators will not reconvene the senate to discuss the murder of many of its most senior members because they are afraid of what will happen to them if they pursue the issue too closely. If they question who perpetrated this bloody act, and for what reason, they fear reprisal violence from Kaname Kuran-sama's allies. They fear their own execution as dissidents. Because the senate will not reconvene, and because everyone has run away to their home estates and surrounded themselves with all the military might they can muster, the land has fallen into small city-states at the brink of war with one another. Everyone distrusts everyone else, and suspects them of being a secret royalist. There is no justice, and the laws of the Night Clan are not being enforced, because there is no one to enforce them. No one is safe outside of their ability to defend themselves individually. The weak are being devoured by those that are stronger, some vampires have been killing others indiscriminately, and the enlightened Vampire Nation seems to have fallen back into the brutal dark ages.

I honor and respect Kaname Kuran-sama as a pureblood and a precious treasure of the Night Clan, and I recognize that he is the legitimate heir to the dynasty that ruled the Night Clan during ancient times, and I know that there are no few vampires who support the Kuran claim to the throne, and who desire another vampiric monarchy to be established. But are these reasons enough to endorse the wholesale murder of countless vampires who have toiled in service to the state, to make sure that peace was safeguarded? Kaname-sama may wish to be a king, and others may wish for him to be a king, but the way to establishing his kingship should not have been through a bloody coup. Now the peace between monarchists and parliamentarians has been broken, and I doubt that it will be easily mended, because everyone has too much fear and hatred, fear and hatred that's still building now, even as we speak.

Yuki-sama, I know you must have some influence over Kaname-sama. Please persuade him to renounce his claim to the throne and to seek to reconcile the warring fragments of our clan. If he were to do this, I believe that the senate could be reconvened and that selections for new members to fill the vacancies in the Most Honored Elder Council of Vampires could begin. It is only in this way that our peaceful future can be safeguarded. I know you believe in your father's dream of peace for everyone. We cannot forge that peace without those that forge it: the senators.

Do not let us fall further into despair and chaos, Yuki-sama. Please convince Kaname-sama to forgo his personal ambitions for the good of all the people of the Night Clan, and for all the people of the world.

Your humble servant,

Maria Kurenai

-

This last letter was very troubling to Yuki, and after she read it through twice, she soberly folded it back into its envelope and put it and the other letters away in her valise. Kaname watched her as she did so, although she could not meet his eyes.

"The letters from home have made you homesick?" he asked her seriously, and gave her a small smile.

She was startled by his immediate read of her unease, so she waved her hands at him and laughed a little awkwardly, "I'll be all right, Kaname. Don't worry. I promise." She gave him a winning smile that covered her confusion and worry and he patted the blanket next to him.

"Then come sit here, and we'll see if we can share anything that might ease your homesickness," he said.

She obediently crawled onto the bed and sat beside him, and he stroked her head as he peaceably read his book.

It was not something she could bring herself to ask him about.

-

The final letter was not one that was addressed to Yuki Cross at all, but instead was intended for her frater-fiancé (husband? when did such things become official for vampires? she didn't know). Zero had delivered it into Kaname Kuran's hands himself, when Kaname had invited himself into Zero's bedroom quite without permission to ascertain the state of his health. It had been as good a time as any, and Zero had relieved himself of his final duty to Headmaster Cross.

It was another pale yellow envelope that smelled of peonies.

_To Kaname Kuran_

was all it said.

-

Dear Kaname-kun,

I hope that you are enjoying your travels with Yuki, and that you both are in good health and good spirits. I miss both of you very much, and Cross Academy just isn't the same without my precious little Yuki and the serious, scary Dorm President Kuran-san. I hope you'll consider visiting home again in the future, once you are more assured of the political situation. You will always have a home here, Kaname-kun, and I want you to know that I think of you as my own son in the same way that I think of Yuki and Kiryu-kun as my precious children. You three always were the hardest to take care of. Ah~ being a father is so difficult. And yet they say that the seed that is sown on stony, thorny ground is the most rewarding to watch grow, although it needs the most tending.

Forgive me, I am being very sentimental.

In the aftermath of the battle that ended in Rido Kuran's death there have been a few new and somewhat unexpected alliances forming. As you may know the senate has dissolved and none of the senators will agree to meet in groups of more than two of three at a time, and even then they seem to go with massive personal guards. The vampire families who have made a commitment to help rebuild Cross Academy are all families with strong monarchical leanings, as you might expect. The Hunter's Association has also begun to fray and fragment, with many moderates seeking to help forge a more stable peace with the vampires involved in the academy cleanup, while conflicting extremists seek to seize control of the vacant leadership position themselves. Things that have remained the same for ages are now facing rapid and unpredictable change. We are facing a future of conflict, Kaname-san. I can only hope we have the strength and the will to protect the ones we love and come through these difficult times.

Be wary of your friends and your enemies, Kaname-kun. Everyone seems to be working according to a personal agenda these days. Guard those that would never betray you, because I suspect that as time draws on the number of people that you can depend on may become slim. Even now there are those that would use you. You have chosen a difficult path, and this is something I told you long ago. I know I cannot persuade you from it, so the most I can do is offer my counsel and my help when I think you will take it. Protect Yuki and try to tolerate Zero. You may find that you cannot afford to estrange him in the difficult times that will surely come. I believe that he is someone you can trust. He is someone that I trust.

I shouldn't have to tell you this, but please don't act rashly. Your patience is perhaps your greatest asset. Plumb its capacity. I think you will find yourself rewarded in the long run.

I hope that someday you manage to build the world you've been striving for all this time, and that once you arrive at that place that you still have the presence of mind to recognize it for what it is.

Until then, and in the times after, I wish you all the greatest happiness,

Kaien Cross

P.S. Give Yuki my looooo~ve. Be sure to send me a cable if I become a grand~pa! XOXOXXOOXO

KC.

-

After finishing the letter Kaname closed his eyes and ran his fingers through his hair, which rebelliously fell directly into his face again.

_Be wary of your friends and your enemies_.

This was a lesson he did not need to be taught.

_Don't act rashly._ _Tolerate Zero._

Kaname looked over at Yuki who had burrowed so far under the blankets that only a slender wrist and delicate hand were showing. A warm square of morning sunlight painted her flesh rosy orange-pink.

_I hope that someday you build the world you're striving for._

Yuki. Yuki Kuran. Kuran-princess. Kuran Queen.

He folded the letter and then carefully stowed it in the flat pocket of his suitcase.

-

**Author's Note:**

Yes, Kaname and Yuki have consummated their relationship, as of chapter four, the Walls of Eden. Yes, this story is Kaname x Zero x Yuki. Kaname x Yuki is an important part of that relationship, but this is not a story about Kaname and Yuki to the exclusion of everyone else (Zero). The story will move at its own pace, and relationships will become more established as the story goes. Also, this whole story is a fabulous high dollar road trip. They won't be going back to Cross Gakuen any time soon, because this is not a story about that. Additional characters will be showing up, but they'll show up in their own good time, so take Headmaster Cross's advice and be patient.

Thanks again for reading and for offering me encouragement!


	6. LESSON ONE: The Ocean

**Via Vincio: The Braided Way **

By Gabihime (Gabihime at gmail dot com)

_LESSON ONE: The ocean is made of little drops of water._

-

Once upon a time there was a goose-girl who was born a princess. While traveling the dark, wild forest, the seeming of her birth was taken away from her and she was left riding an old sulky horse and wearing rags, while her maid and traveling companion donned her royal clothes and mounted her fine, enchanted horse. It is said that bearing cannot be hidden, no matter how it is dressed, and that a rose will always show itself a rose no matter what it is called.

We shall see how true these truths truly are.

After a long age, the goose-girl and the princess finally made their way out of the wilderness and arrived in the land of the young king, whom the princess had been promised to marry. When they arrived and dismounted, the princess was received with honor and dignity proper for one of her station, while the goose-girl was left standing beside the horses. The young king looked steadily back at the goose-girl and asked a question of the princess.

"Who is that maid yonder? She is a lovely girl."

"She is just a milkmaid I picked up along my travels to be my companion," replied the princess with some disdain. "She is no one important. Please give her something to do so that she doesn't stand around all day doing nothing with herself."

Perhaps the most important thing to note is that the princess truly believed what she told the young king, because she had convinced herself it was true.

After the princess had retired inside the palace to be shown to her quarters, the young king stood looking at the goose-girl for a long time, but at last went inside himself.

-

The morning after her day of bed rest, Yuki emerged full of energy and good cheer, with fine color and high spirits. Kaname also seemed supernally pleased with himself, which was something the other members of their traveling band could not help but notice. He was quiet, as reserved and sure of himself as always, but there was also a faint smugness about him that was _uncommon_. Aido had his suspicions about what might have triggered this change in Kaname's behavior, but when he attempted to broach this subject with Ruka in a hennish whisper he was told by the lady to mind his own business.

As Kain never obliged his gossip and he had no desire to share his guesses with Zero Kiryu or Seiren, Aido was forced to content himself with the knowledge that _he knew_ what was going on, even if no one else did.

At breakfast everyone was genial, despite it being an ungodly hour for members of the Night Clan to be about. But some things could only be seen in the day, and after all, as Zero had put it "It's not like the entire world orders itself around vampires." Sometimes they were forced to order themselves around the world.

Yuki was just finishing a final slice of toast before returning to her room to pull on her coat and hat and gloves to brave the chill of the city with the others. As she munched on it she turned to regard Zero Kiryu, who was, as expected, only a few steps from her.

"How did you end up without a coat in the first place?" she asked, because this was a question that had been troubling her.

Zero turned his face away before answering her flatly, "I left it on the train, when I first got to Beijing."

"The coat I bought you?" she asked incredulously, "You left it on a train?"

He bowed his head then forced himself to take responsibility for his actions and she was caught by the force behind his stare.

"I'm sorry," he apologized tersely. "I'm sorry that I lost something that you gave to me. I was in a hurry when I got to Beijing. I knew you were close by."

Her face softened and she laughed, because his serious apology was both intensely touching and intensely awkward. "Zero, you don't have to apologize so seriously. It was just really surprising to hear you say that. I never expected that you left it somewhere. I thought maybe you hadn't brought it because you didn't like it, or it didn't fit right or something."

"I liked it," he denied, and so was written another fact of the universe that could not be otherwise. Zero had liked his coat. There was to be no argument.

"Well," Yuki shrugged pleasantly, "There's just nothing else for it. I'll get you a new coat to replace the one you lost."

"That's not necessary," Zero answered immediately, but she had already held up her hands, as if she expected to have to duke it out with him.

"_Of course_ it's necessary. We're going across _Siberia_ next. Do you know how cold it gets in Siberia? Do you even know? Can you even tell me how cold it gets in Siberia?" she demanded.

"Can _you_?" he asked her, as he was dubious about her knowledge of world climates.

"_Very cold_," she answered triumphantly, as if this answer were perfectly good enough. "Cold enough that you need a coat no matter how stubborn you are. I mean, Zero, just seeing you walking around Haerbin without a coat makes me uncomfortable. I just think about how cold you are and it starts to make _me _cold."

"Fine," he replied shortly. "If it will make you happy, then buy me another coat, and I swear I'll wear it."

"We can even write your name inside of this one," she teased, "In case you lose it."

"I'm not five years old," Zero rolled his eyes.

"Just like a little brother," she crowed, and seemed to be thoroughly enjoying being proven right, "_Who needs looking after._"

"That seems to be one way of looking at it," he answered dryly.

-

While consulting with Ruka over the possible location where a new coat for Zero might be discovered, Yuki was waylaid by Aido Hanabusa who insisted that he be put in charge of this shopping expedition. As Ruka and Yuki had already discussed the possibility of spending the day engaged in the exploration of Haerbin's many couture clothing boutiques, their itinerary seemed set, and Kaname was obliged to give it his seal of approval. Yuki was planning on looking at many lovely things, admiring the way that nearly everything looked on Ruka, and then pleasing herself by eating fruit parfaits with Aido at the close of their arduous consumer endeavor.

But before she was willing to indulge herself, Zero must have a new coat. _It had been decided._

After they had all piled out of their taxis on Haerbin's high street of couture fashion, Aido made himself the leader of their pack, fluttering his hand over his head as a sign that they should follow him.

"Obviously we don't have time for anything bespoke," he was saying negligently. "So it'll have to be _prêt-à-porter_. I suppose that will suit well enough this time. Rome wasn't built it a day."

"Ready-to-wear," Ruka explained to her as they followed Aido at a more measured pace. Zero and Kaname trailed the two of them, walking evenly, and Kain wandered along in the rear, his arms folded behind his head. Where Seiren was, Yuki could not say, although this was not altogether unusual.

"What I mean," Aido said, "Is that if he's going to follow us around like a stray dog, we might at least try and help him look like he belongs with us. Otherwise it just makes us look bad, like we're traveling with poor relations. Maybe we could dress him up like a valet -- " he wondered aloud.

"_Absolutely not_," Yuki vetoed with some force. "Zero isn't _anybody's_ valet."

Aido made a huffy sound and said nothing in reply, so Yuki crossed her arms over her chest.

"Do you suggest that _I_ should be dressed as a valet, Aido Hanabusa-san?" she asked, and her voice was unusually low and direct.

Aido threw his hands in the air as if he had been struck and immediately responded, "_No, Yuki-sama_."

"Of course not," she agreed, and her tone was as friendly and mundane as ever. "So don't think or say things like that about Zero either. If it helps you to remember, think of the two of us as the same person. If you wouldn't say it about me because it's not nice, then don't say it about Zero."

"But Yuki-sama," Aido was mortified and started babbling before he could stop himself. "Think of what you've just said! I can't possibly think of that _awful, rude level e who pointed a gun at Kaname-sama _-- "

"Neither did I suffer that," she declared, and her voice carried authoritatively. "Insults leveled at those I care about are insults directed at me. You are also under my care, Aido Hanabusa." _Recognize and respect this._

"_Yuki-sama_," Aido pleaded, his attempt to get her to see his reason, and Kaname prepared himself to step in definitely and settle this case of disrespect toward Yuki, but she rather abruptly settled it herself.

"_Aido Hanabusa_," her voice was crisp and devastating, and he meekly bowed his head and murmured an apology.

Zero laid his hand on her shoulder and spoke, his voice low and quiet, an attempt to be discreet. In some ways he was a dog used to being beaten.

"Yuki, don't worry about it," he said, "It's not important. It doesn't bother me -- "

"It _is_ important," she insisted sharply, and Zero started, but she was not yet finished. "It is offensive to _me_." She took a deep breath and when she spoke again her tone had normalized. "We should all be friends. Friends don't say hurtful things to one another like that. Friends are nice to one another."

Left hanging in the air was another unstated commandment, this one delivered by Yuki Cross.

_Thou shalt be nice, or thou shalt suffer my displeasure._

-

They finally found the object of their journey under the sign of Lloyd & Howard, established 1872, a fine looking tailor of menswear. Aido held the door for Yuki, Ruka, and Kaname, but when he discovered that he had unintentionally continued holding the door for Zero, he very nearly let the door loose on him, but then considered the commandment Yuki had delivered.

_Just pretend Zero is me. If it's something you wouldn't do to me, because it is unkind, then don't do it to Zero._

He would never consider dropping a door on Yuki-Cross-Kuran-sama, not even in the most jealous and delirious of fever dreams. He gritted his teeth and bore it as well as he could and Zero crossed the threshold into the store without noting any particular courtesy from him, which made Aido grind his teeth in impotent frustration. Kain stopped to look at him, holding the door open, his face screwed up as if he were about to unleash a category five tantrum, and clapped him on the shoulder.

"Come on," Kain advised calmly. "We've all got to do our best to get used to new things." He paused and looked in the open door of the shop, and those clustered inside it. Kaname was already being accosted by a clerk. "Besides, aren't you supposed to be Yuki-sama's guide today?"

This cheered Aido a bit, as Kain had hoped, and he perked, lacing his fingers together as Kain took the weight of the door with one hand and let Aido duck under his arm to flutter back to being the center of Yuki's attention again.

Yuki was pleased to see him again, clearly. She smiled and looked relieved as he took center stage. Zero was standing beside her, looking entirely out of place. Ruka seemed to be gently suggesting ties to Kaname, which he was gently refusing.

"We are purchasing a coat for this gentleman," Aido explained, gesturing to Zero with a graceful hand, "But we won't be staying in the city for any length of time, so we need something off the peg," he finished, and rested one hand on his hip. "An outdoor jacket, suitable for the weather, I think," he said.

The clerk eyed Zero, as if taking his measure with practiced eyes, and they lingered for a moment over the butt of Bloody Rose. Then he folded his hand over his chest and bowed deeply.

"Of course," he said, "Only the best for you, our honored customers. I'll just be a moment, sir. I'll bring a selection of our finest."

Aido cocked an eyebrow and Yuki tilted her head to the side.

"Don't you think he's behaving a little strangely?" she whispered to Zero.

He frowned briefly before whispering back. "It's because he thinks we're with a cartel. This is not the first time this has happened to me in China."

This was not an answer that Yuki expected. She flushed.

"So he thinks we're criminals? He thinks we're the mafia? He's afraid of us?" she whispered. She bit her lip. "That makes me uncomfortable."

"So you want to tell him he's mistaken, that he shouldn't be afraid because you're not with a cartel, you're just vampires?" Zero whispered back dryly. "I'm sure that'll put his mind at ease."

She cross her arms and frowned. "It's your fault for carrying Bloody Rose around like that. What are people supposed to think?"

"That I'm an Interpol agent," he said flatly.

Yuki rolled her eyes. "Zero, not even I'm willing to believe that."

Zero shrugged and pulled a thin mesh cord from the collar of his shirt. From it dangled a flat leather case which he held open for Yuki to see.

She gaped.

"You really are an agent for Interpol!" she exclaimed louder than she intended, and then flushed again before returning to her conspiratorial whisper. "I'm really surprised!"

Zero frowned at her again. "It's my cover story," he said. "It's the same cover story that every hunter adopts when he travels abroad. We have an established relationship with the ICPO, although only the executive council are aware of the real nature of the world." Zero shrugged. "It makes things simpler."

"Why don't you just tell people you're with Interpol then?" she asked. "When they think you're with the mafia," she explained.

"Because I've learned that I'm generally treated better when they think I'm with a cartel," he answered her shortly, and when he saw her frowning he shrugged again and spoke to her lowly. "Listen, Yuki. Let them think whatever they like. You know what's true, and you accept it. That's enough. Other people don't matter."

"Well," she answered him uncertainly, "I think they ought to matter, at least a little. I want people to see the real Zero, because I like that Zero."

But this was a statement he would not reply to.

-

Several ages later, they emerged from Lloyd & Howard with Zero adequately suited for the cold of the city. Yuki had ended up choosing a camel-colored covert coat with velvet lapels at Aido's suggestion. As he had sworn to her, Zero wore it and he liked it and said nothing else about it, other than 'thank you.' Because she was still concerned about his body temperature and how it might fare across Siberia she also bought him a homburg hat the color of weathered, dusty concrete, some leather gloves, and a silk scarf.

Aido was sure that Yuki would faint seeing the final bill, unused as she was to actually _buying _the clothing she wore these days, so Aido confiscated the credit card that she had confiscated from Zero, and signed his name _Kaien Cross_, with a glorious flourish.

"Well," said Yuki, in an attempt to justify their purchases when she finally returned the card to Zero, "You can think of it like a birthday present from the headmaster."

"Yeah," said Zero, eying her dubiously. "Sure."

Their serious shopping done, Yuki felt that they all deserved a rest, so rather than continuing the day by wandering from boutique to boutique like nomadic fashionistas, she proposed they cut immediately to the cake-and-parfait-eating part of their itinerary.

They located a cafe a few blocks away. Soon they were all sitting around on delicate wrought iron chairs that had been painted an arresting shade of pink, drinking tea and eating sweets, which put Aido in a better temper. Aido sat at a table with Kain and Ruka, but Zero audaciously sat down at a table with Yuki and Kaname, although he did not often look directly at the elder pureblood vampire.

The sugar Yuki consumed seemed to relate directly to the energy she expended, and Zero watched her eat a plate of macaroons, a bowl of mixed gelato, and a croissant spread with blueberry jam while he drank only coffee with a little cream. Kaname sipped at his rose-scented tea and ate little mint macaroons when Yuki pressed them upon him. She sometimes pressed pastel colored macaroons on Zero, and he ate them mechanically and dutifully. Since he really didn't seem to be enjoying them, Yuki eventually stopped forcing them on him.

After she had eaten enough to satiate a growing and active young lady, Yuki sat back in her chair and heaved a placid sigh of happiness and contentment.

"Ah, I feel much better now," she said, and smiled first at Kaname and then at Zero, who was watching her seriously from over the rim of his coffee mug. Kaname's mouth turned up faintly at the corners.

"So, will we continue shopping then?" he asked her, for Yuki was the barometer by which they laid their plans.

She cocked her head and thought about it, but then shrugged. "I think I've actually had enough of boutique shopping today. I had no idea that shopping for men's clothes was so complicated. I just thought you went in and bought a shirt and some trousers. I didn't actually realize there were _different kinds_." She paused and then looked at the other tenant at the table sidelong. "Zero always seems to be wearing the same thing all the time. I suppose I thought all boys were like that."

"Clothes say a lot about your personality," interjected Aido, waving his dessert fork in the air to illustrate. "For instance, someone who wears cuffed trousers -- "

"It is a hassle," admitted Kaname, as if Aido had not spoken. "I would rather simply be comfortable."

Having been so effectively _shut down_, Aido consoled himself by ordering a third flan and refrained from further comment.

While waiting for her sugary respite to digest, Yuki ordered fresh tea for herself, and seeing that they would not be likely leaving the cafe for some time yet, Zero excused himself from their table and went up to the counter, when he purchased a postcard with an idyllic scene of galloping snow horses silhouetted against the blue sky. After finishing his transaction, he went to sit at an empty table that faced the wall, as if he had something to hide.

Never one to be put off by such easily breached defenses, Yuki rose from the table and crept up quietly behind him and read the contents of his postcard over his shoulder.

It said very plainly:

_Am doing all right._

_Zero_

She brightened like a little star, giving off happiness with all her might.

"Is that a postcard to the headmaster?" she asked, and Zero started, apparently truly unaware that she had been watching him.

"It is," he answered slowly, and she sat down beside him without further invitation.

"I think it's nice for you to write him. He worries about you, you know," she smiled as if remembering a time passed fondly. "It's nice to have someone to worry over you."

Zero looked at her steadily for a moment, then shifted his attention back to the postcard, as if he were afraid of giving too much away with his stare. He was aware of Kaname Kuran's eyes on his back. He was aware of the eyes of Aido Hanabusa, Ruka Soren, and Kain Akatsuki, and he cared nothing for them.

"He worries about you too," he said lowly, and when she smiled again it was bittersweet, and she ducked her head.

"I know," she said, a little embarrassed. "I'm going to send him a letter soon. He asked me to, and I think I should." She paused and shook her head. "No, that's not it. I think I'd like to. I'd like to send him a letter."

"I think he'd like that," Zero said simply, and she reached across the table and idly squeezed his hand, like he was still one and ten and she was not yet. He said nothing about it, but enjoyed the feeling of her touch as long as it lingered, but then she had drawn her hand away and was looking at the postcard again.

"It's a good start, Zero," she was saying, "But I think it could do with a little more affection. Right now it seems like a postcard you might be sending to your drill sergeant."

He raised an eyebrow and leaned forward seriously on folded hands.

"What exactly is it that you suggest?" he asked, looking down at the postcard and its one line of filling.

"You should sign it 'love, Zero,'" she said helpfully.

"I don't want to write that," Zero grimaced.

"You ought to," she wheedled, "He did buy you a very nice birthday present."

"_You _bought me that birthday present," he argued, "I've never written anything like that to the Headmaster before in my life."

"But still," she insisted, and he could tell by the tone of her voice that she was beginning to get cross at him for being stubborn, "I think it would be nice if you did it. I think it would make him happy."

"Do you sign your cards to him 'Love, Yuki'?" Zero demanded, attempting to find some high ground on an island he sensed was rapidly sinking into a swamp.

"No," she admitted, and her face fell as she bit her lip, "But I think I ought to start."

Seeing her sitting there, biting her lip and looking troubled and guilty and sincere, he found that he could not do anything but give into her.

"All right," he said, "I'll do it. But only if you do it too."

Yuki brightened again, apparently more than willing to exercise the goodwill in her heart immediately, and she rushed back to the counter and bought a postcard with a scene of the city's most famous basilica and then returned to Zero's table to hijack his ink pen. She studiously applied herself to the writing of the card, and when she had finished it read something like this:

_Dear (blot) Father,_

_I am doing very well. I promise to write a proper letter to you soon. Tell Yori that I miss her._

_Love,_

_Yuki_

Presented with this bit of correspondence, Zero was compelled by Yuki to revise his postcard until it said:

_Am doing all right. Thank you for the coat._

_Love,_

_Zero_

At this, Yuki was satisfied, but Zero sat back and crossed his arms.

"Why is it only the two of us? I think Kuran ought to have to do it too," he observed frankly.

Yuki's brows knit faintly, and she frowned. "I don't think you should talk about it like it's something unpleasant, like taking cough medicine."

Zero shrugged and then revised his statement, "If you think the headmaster is going to be happy getting love from you," and here he grimaced again, "And love from me, don't you think he'd also appreciate Kuran's love? I mean, they're pretty close, right?"

Yuki frowned again in concentration, and Zero could see her attempting to work the justification out to herself. At last she looked up at Kaname Kuran and gave him what Zero felt to be melting smile. Kaname smiled back in his slight way, and Yuki apparently took this as all the approval she needed, as she bent over her card again. When she finished, Zero saw that this brief addendum had been added to the bottom of her card:

_P.S. Kaname also sends his love._

"There," she said triumphantly, as if she'd won some sort of contest they'd been having, and before he could ruminate on this development further, Yuki had seized both their postcards and carried them off to Kaname Kuran for inspection and postage.

Zero flushed without intending to and turned his back on the two of them. The last thing that he wanted was for Kaname Kuran to read his (brief) words of filial affection for the fruitbat who was Kaien Cross. He was angry at himself for showing such a weakness to Kaname, and he was maybe more angry at himself that he was embarrassed and he had let that embarrassment show plainly on his face. It seemed to be something that had absolutely nothing to do with Kaname Kuran at all. It was between he and Yuki and the Headmaster, but somehow Zero felt as if he had lost a pitched battle, because he knew that Kaname would never show embarrassment over such a thing, no matter what Yuki might write on her card.

Zero gritted his teeth.

_It had made Yuki happy. It had made Yuki happy. It had made Yuki happy._

And that was all there was.

-

After their long sojourn in the forest of the pink wrought iron chairs, Kaname suggested that they spend the rest of the day doing a little more sight-seeing. There were many things to see in Haerbin, after all, and Yuki was to be fully indulged in her exploration of the world.

So they toured some of the more lovely architecture in the town, wandering among the old stone facades of elder buildings, looking at the onion domes so strange in this Chinese city that butted up against the icy shoulder of Siberia. Yuki took dozens of photographs with the intention of one day organizing them into a comprehensive album of their travels, and turned her face up toward the white sky that stretched horizon to horizon and was lost in that vast snowfield in the sky.

At last they found themselves in the brick square before a great basilica, and Kaname sent them off to finish any last minute shopping they might have to do before boarding the Trans-Siberian Express.

"We'll leave the day after tomorrow, on the early train," Kaname announced to them as he faced the front of the beautiful but careworn church. "If Yuki is willing," he finished, looking down at her brown head in its pert little beret.

Yuki smiled at that and nodded, folding her hands inside her muff. After all, there was still a great deal of the world to see, although she knew that Haerbin would remain in her heart always, as the seat of beginnings and of changes.

So they all went off to take care of their small needs for the journey, and Yuki found herself standing alone with Kaname. Zero had given her a long, steady look, then had gone on his way, although only to a small store across the plaza. Yuki knew he would always be close at hand. He had said so. It was true.

After Zero had gone, Kaname looked for a moment at the white-out sky, and then addressed the open air.

"I wonder what Kiryu-kun will do after we've left Haerbin?" he asked, "Will he travel back to the academy, I wonder, or does he have other business in China?"

Yuki flushed and looked at her feet. This was a question she had dreaded answering, afraid of Kaname's hurt, afraid of his disappointment. She had not been trying to conceal her intentions. She did not want to lie to herself or to Kaname, but it was so hard to say to him, this simple thing it had been easy to promise to Zero, because it had seemed like the right thing to do.

She still believed that. It had been the right thing to do. The headmaster had said, _It is never wrong to love someone. Never regret it._

She would not regret it. Zero needed her. She needed, she needed to know Zero was all right, to know that Zero was happy. Beyond that, she wanted Zero near her because that made her happy. Perhaps it was terrible and awful and selfish, but she wanted to keep Zero beside her. She needed... Zero. That was all there was.

She had to be honest and to live with the consequences of her decision. Kaname deserved her forthright honesty. She did not want to keep anything from him.

She gathered her courage and looked up at him as seriously as she could manage.

"Zero will be coming with us," she answered, and she found once she had said it, it was easy to continue on. "Wherever we go. So when you make arrangements for our travel, please consider Zero as well."

Kaname had known how she would answer before he had even broken the silence with his low question. He was not a fool, and he had read the signs, seen the way she talked to Zero, mentioned their future, he had seen how she smiled at Zero Kiryu even when he was difficult. After all, she had bought him a coat to cross Siberia in. It was not that difficult an equation to balance.

But still, some perverse passion had made him want to force this truth from her mouth, despite or perhaps _because of_ her interior struggle. There was a jealous, bitter, violent side of him that was chafing under the cutting lines of the harness he had donned himself. He did not want to allow Kiryu the courtesy of even sitting at a tea table with Yuki, and yet here she was, informing him that Kiryu would keep following at her heel, like a beloved lap dog. He did not want her to spend any of her attention on anyone else but _him_.

But Yuki must be allowed to be Yuki.

Besides, she had already sealed the contract of her devotion to him, to no one else but Kaname Kuran, with her body, and this was something he could hold onto with both hands.

"Very well," he said as he turned his face toward her to give her a gentle smile. "It will be as you wish."

She smiled, encouraged at his calm reaction. _He had told her before that it would be all right, and now he showed her: it would be all right. Zero would be happy. Kaname would be happy. Everything would be nice._

Kaname slipped his arm through hers while she lingered distracted, whistling in the dark. He nodded in the direction of the church.

"I think," he said softly, "That I would like some quiet time to think."

And so they went into the basilica.

Kaname led them down the aisle of smooth, worn stone and they settled at last in a row very near the altar, and Yuki found herself looking at everything around her in hushed awe. She always felt this way whenever she was taken into an elder church. It wasn't any kind of particularly religious reverence, but more an amazed respect of the space itself, raised and carved by human hands, laid with beloved treasures and relics.

The stained windows told picture parables and stories of saints, whispered the truths of blessed mysteries, and they also let in jewel colored light, soft, diffused, and beautiful. Although Yuki had no particular feelings about the nature or existence of god, she felt that when she looked up into the heart of the rose window, she was looking into heaven itself.

In a place like this, surrounded by saints and saviors, Yuki found she had courage that she lacked in other spaces.

She would ask him about Maria Kurenai's letter.

"Kaname-sama," she began softly, looking up at the icon of the blessed mother, lit as it was by flickering candlelight. "Do you want the vampires of the senate to make you their king?"

She turned to look at him as she asked, and she found that he was also in quiet contemplation of the altar. She was sure she had asked something wrong, something that upset him, that he was angry at her now, or disappointed, but he bowed his head once and then covered her hand with his own.

"It is not within their power to do this thing even if they wished it, Yuki," he answered her very quietly, and as if he sensed her confusion, he continued without being bidden. "Men, no matter who they are -- senators, booksellers, farmers, clergy – men do not have it in their power to _make_ a king. This is because a king is not made. A king simply _is_."

Yuki bit her lip. "I don't understand," she said, "I'm trying to understand, Kaname-sama, so please, try and explain it a little more." She shook her head and tried again. "I don't understand the _meaning _of what you're saying...." she trailed off helplessly, unable even to share the method of her mis-dis-understanding.

He smiled at her briefly, gently, and she felt enveloped by his tender, passionate love. He turned his eyes to the beautifully carved figure of the crucifix before he spoke again.

"What I mean is that although the vampires of the senate perhaps believe they have the power to confer or revoke kingship as if it is a common prize offered to whosoever pleases them most, they do not have this power at all, because men, either individuals, or in groups, do not _make_ kings," he closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them there was steel flashing in them, and a note of pride in his voice that was awing, that was regal. "They cannot make me a king," he said, "I _am_ a king. I was born to be a king. I became a king when Rido Kuran killed our father. There is no body under heaven with the authority to either bestow or revoke my throne, because it is a throne I was born to rule. Just as the council of elders cannot _grant _the _rank_ of pureblood any more than they could turn someone into a unicorn, they cannot grant me the courtesy of being king. I have been their king for ten years already."

She considered this, and then turned her head to the side before answering him. "I understood that our family, that the House of Kuran, that we gave up the right to rule the Night Clan in favor of the senate, so that things could be more democratic -- "

He laughed shortly and it was not a pleasant sound. She cringed and he squeezed her hand again as if to soften his reaction.

"Forgive me, Yuki," he said, "I am not laughing at you. But think of this, is the world created by senate, does it seem to you to be a fair democracy? Is it an honest, representative body?" He did not wait for her answer, but answered himself. "It is not," he said, "How could it be? As beasts it is better that we not play at the shams of democracy and representation, pretending that we are human. Do wolves rule themselves through democratic methods? Such an idea is laughable, and becomes moreso when someone witnesses it in action. Look at the senate, Yuki. Individual senators care nothing for the prosperity of the Night Clan, care nothing for the lives of the individual vampires that make it up. They care only to safeguard their own power, to guard their miserable lives, and to increase their lives, by any means, beyond the natural span. They tell themselves pleasantries about their noble self-sacrifice for the Night Clan, and perhaps they even believe these lies themselves. They condone any methods, will approve of any violence, hold nothing and no one sacred, not even their own kin." Kaname closed his eyes again and gripped her hand firmly. "Did you know that Elder Senrei gave his daughter to Rido Kuran as an offering to appease him? He gave his own child to a monster, a rabid dog, just so he could be assured of a continued supply of pure blood to keep his wretched body alive." His grip loosened a little, and he ran his thumb over the back of her hand. "The House of Kuran did not give up our right to rule, we merely stopped asserting it. Others have interpreted this act as they wished. The reason that the council sent Rido Kuran after our family is not because they wanted to please _him_. The council wanted to be rid of the House of Kuran once and for all. Powerful senators rarely have use for a royal family, even one that has apparently stepped aside."

"Then why did they let you live, onii-sama?" she was obviously very troubled, trying to work all of this out herself. She did not even realize what she had called him. "You hid me away, mother hid me away to keep me safe, but you, I know you lived with Elder Ichio for a long time. If they wanted to be done with all the Kurans, why didn't they kill you then?"

He smiled a bit, an attempt at reassurance. "Perhaps they would have," he said, "If I had let it escalate to that point." He shook his head, "No, I am making it out to be simpler than it is. When Rido succeeded in killing father, and mother put her charm on you, and I could not finish Rido myself, they knew that I was an orphan, a young prince whom they could raise in their own image, wean in the court of their deceit and conceit, their honey-coated treachery. I believe they intended to kindle in my breast a love of and respect for the senate, perhaps even a gentle affection for all the elder councilors. And then they would marry me off to someone of their choosing and they would have a second puppet Kuran, one that would have been more suited to being a decorative prop and pretty justification for their ever-increasing power. You must know, Yuki, that despite attempting to brutally murder us, that despite considering us to be nothing than a production facility for a tradeable commodity, _that they rule in our names_, that these evils are being perpetrated against us, against others in the Night Clan, by writ of _our will_."

He studied their hands. "You see, Yuki, the councilors had nothing to lose by making this gamble, because the gamble was rigged, and had always been rigged from the beginning. I would behave, or I wouldn't, and if I didn't they would just send Rido after me to finish me, when I was no longer useful to them, and then spin my tragic murder, or suicide, or _accidental death_ to their benefit as well. It is a truth, Yuki, that although the elder council, and in fact, much of the senate itself, has nothing but _feigned_ and _false_ respect for purebloods, they have a great deal of _use_ for them. This is not only because the count our blood as a miracle drug, an opiate of the privileged class, allowing them to heal injuries they would not otherwise survive, and to prolong their lives long after they should have turned to dust. Our blood has another power as well, and this power is perhaps the most potent of all. This is the power of _rule_. The senate rules the Night Clan because they sell everyone a beautifully constructed lie: that they live to protect their liege lords, the purebloods, that they rule in our stead as stewards, as a _service_ to us. They sell this lie so well to the Night Clan that nearly everyone believes it, even their own children. They show the world a beautiful, gilded fortress that they have built to protect their beloved lords, filled with every luxury, but what they have built in truth is a cattle pen and slaughter house, a place for purebloods to be kept in check until the blood and meat of their bodies is needed for the table of the senate, for the table of the Elder Council. They are beasts that play at a sham game of being men, and we have become their _livestock_. They tie ribbons and bells around our necks and make out as if we are beloved pets, their honored lords. But the truth is much simpler. They just wish to eat us. It is the only purpose they conceive of purebloods having, in this, their _enlightened _paradise."

Yuki pulled her hands away from him and covered her mouth as she hunched over in mute horror. Kaname put his arm around her trembling shoulders and pulled her closer to him, so that their bodies met, shoulder to hip to knee, bundled together on the pew.

"_I don't want to be eaten_," she whimpered, "Onii-sama, _I don't want to be eaten_."

He enfolded her in his other arm and held her there as she trembled, terrified that there were those who still wished to drain her dry, to eat her flesh and crunch her bones to powder. It was as if she were still a little girl afraid of monsters, and there had never been anyone to tell her that the monsters that lived in the dark were not real, that they only crept out of the fear in her heart. This was because the monsters _were _real, and there had never been a time when they had not been. They would eat her. They wanted to eat her.

"I will never let them lay their hands on you, Yuki," Kaname whispered to her fiercely. "I will never let them touch you. Don't fear. Don't cry. I began laying our path to the future a long time ago. You will be safe. I will reorder the world to make it so. _You will be safe_. Although there are many who find no use for us beyond the blood in our bodies, there are also many who remember who we are, who do not deny us, who do not refuse us. There are those that remember that the old ways are the right ways. Perhaps I have lived so long and succeeded against such long odds not because I was born to be king, but because I believe better of people than they do," he smiled again briefly. "I have always been rewarded."

Yuki shivered again, pulled away from him so she could look up into his face and then bowed her head. "I believe you. I believe what it is that you say, Kaname-sama," she said, and she was struggling to be brave, although her voice was unsteady and wavering, still chased by fear and terror. "I understand now that you've explained it to me, but what if – Kaname-sama, what if – will our happiness -- will our way of living -- will we throw the world into chaos and despair?"

"All things that live must always strive to continue to live." His words to her were gentle, but his face was grim, and he turned his eyes again to the carved figure of the savior on the cross. "The world has been sliding into chaos and despair for a long time now. The peace and stability of the senate was a false peace. To look at that way of living and to consider it good enough because _some_ are safe, because _some_ are happy, that is both hypocrisy and cowardice. It is not only the purebloods that suffer. It is not even only the Night Clan that suffers. We have all forgotten who we are, forgotten our purpose, or perhaps it is that we never understood it in the first place. I will burn into the heavens a new letter of the law, _and it will be obeyed._" He looked down at the flickering candles. "Perhaps that is the reason I was born. To deliver this law to those erring children."

He seemed very vulnerable then, lost in thought, his head bent, his eyes closed, as if he was at that moment suffering the full burden of his fate.

She gathered his hand in hers and clasped it to her chest. "I don't believe that," she smiled despite her fear, and tried to find her own strength in that smile, so that she could give it to him. "I hope, that is, I want to believe, that you were born to meet me. Not because we live according to our destinies, but because we make them true with our will."

He smiled then, and it was weak and flickering, but with a promise of future strength, as though that smile were a feeling in his breast that had just been born.

"You're very strong, Yuki," he said, and touched the top of her head with his hand, feeling the thick, silky hair under the pads of his fingers. "I believe that you have the power to protect me."

"_Truth_," she insisted passionately, and when he looked at her face, mildly startled by her partially nonsensical outburst, she blushed and her eyes clung to the hem of her skirt. "If I have a truth," she tried to explain haltingly, "Then that's what it is."

She turned her head as she heard the soft, echoing rhythm of low bootheels on the mosaic stone of the basilica's floor. Zero was standing there, holding a brown paper package, his shopping apparently finished. He had taken his hat off and held it in his hand.

Yuki smiled at him genuinely, pleasure mixed with relief that he had come to find them. He nodded his head once, but his expression did not change. He stood silently, and looked at the two of them.

After a moment, Kaname spoke.

"This is a house of God, Kiryu-kun. All are welcome here. If you would like to sit, then sit."

Zero said nothing, and stared hard at the back of Kaname's head. Kaname gave none of his attention to Zero, simply continued to study the crucifix. Yuki looked first at Kaname and then at Zero, and tilted her head slightly to the side.

At last, Zero quietly moved to sit in the pew behind them, and bowed his own head in contemplation.

-


End file.
